Volunteering With Us
Have you ever Volunteered? If not, read on. When I was in my early twenties, I became ill, and I started to look for help. You see, our NHS does not have any provision for community or support. It treats the body, the individual, but stops there. It doesn’t teach you to live with a condition or support you in that endeavour. That reaching out led me to unpaid Volunteers, people who had walked my path before me. After seeing their contributions and changing peoples lives, I started to participate and felt better for it.
One of the things I hear is. I don’t have time. I could be working or spending time with my family. I would like to rebuttal that Volunteering is not a job. There is no commitment. It does not interfere with family time, managed correctly. In fact, it builds these areas of our lives up, not down. I hope to convince you of the win-win that awaits you.
Benefits
The main advantages of Volunteering are:
- health (both mental and physical)
- time out
- community
- learning
Health
Managing a healthy weight, stress and taking exercise are universally important. Volunteering, for example, means we are less likely to develop hypertension as we age. Those lazy days and tv binges evaporate when we have a cause to be a part of. It keeps us busy. It appears this means better health. Our bodies, if not engaged, weaken.
Mental health improves in Volunteers. Depression and Anxiety fade as loneliness and connections build. Happiness hormones are released when we help others. Have you ever felt good dropping a pound in a bucket to help? Felt good at helping someone in a wheelchair negotiate a curb? Dropped off a meal to an elderly neighbour? Now imagine that feeling magnified and continuing. That is Volunteering.
Time Out
Do you want to forget your problems and stresses? There is no question our lives will always be filled with life. But we all need a time out, a break from that. When we volunteer, we jump out of our pigeonhole. We meet people from walks of life very different to ours. A pilot spending every day with pilots can get very dry. Now imagine an opportunity to spend time with a butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker. How would that happen in our pocketed lives today without Volunteering? Our careers can feel mundane at times. We sometimes need to just do something else with different people to recharge and lift that feeling. Volunteering lets us jump into another walk of life in a meaningful way. A time out.
Community
When money is removed from the equation, we give our time not to trading but to make a difference. While economic activity, for monetary reward, will always be one of the most important endeavours, there is a strange synergy when money is removed. These social and communal problems can suddenly be looked at, thus increasing our economic value. Suppose a small town is messy, attracting few visitors. In that case, an effort to clean up and add flowers by Volunteers leads to more visitors. What follows is more economic activity. Significant challenges in our communities can likewise be solved by Volunteering because they don’t come with the money strings. Otherwise, local and national governments take on these issues, usually with higher costs and poorer returns. You know the problems close to you and can play a part in solving them. Think of the world if we all contributed in this manner, by choice.
Learning
I worked up most of this website, but part of it was contributed by non-developers. People who, unlike me, had not been formally trained for this. And they took those skills back to their employers. Many employers now contribute their staff to Voluntary programs as part of building teamwork and honing core skills. Very few employers will look negatively at Volunteering. Volunteering can be a source of learning and development. Education leads to more opportunities in your life and for your employer. One of the most significant challenges employers find in their staff is losing perspectives due to churning out the same old. The correct type of Volunteering can capture a new vision and reinvigorate an employee.
So now we have the broad picture. Why volunteer with us specifically?
Why us?
I believe firstly you need to ask, am I connecting? I always advise a connection. Find that, and Volunteering with any Charity will be a success for you. Have a look at our site. Is this a vision you can dig?
All our Volunteers are connected to Male Health issues. Sometimes simply knowing a neighbour who has Prostate Cancer is the connection.
After that, roles can be found. We have a Volunteering page that will allow you to begin a journey with us.
Be Awesome!
