Chances are, if you’re in high school, you’ve probably been forced to do at least a couple of hours of volunteering. It’s usually a drag and I had the same mindset as all of you. I always thought volunteering to be kind of pointless as its work without getting paid, and if I were to do that anywhere, it’d be at home. Secondly, I felt that the ‘experience’ that counselors constantly rave to you about are overrated. Employers don’ really trust you because, well you’re not getting paid so they give you tedious tasks like copying and pasting documents, filing, or putting boxes away. I experienced this when I volunteered as part of my school’s volunteering program as an “Information Technology assistant”. It sounds cool, but in reality, all I did was scan dirty, grubby, ripped up pictures into their database for 80 hours.
So why the change of heart? Because it can get you places. I’m not referring to the ever so ambiguous “great place” you’ll be in life, literal, physical places. Recently, there was a summit in town that I wanted to attend, but admission was a hefty $200. Someone wisely suggested that I volunteer there so I did, and I got in, helped out here and there, met a bunch of great people, and even got to listen in on some talks. For free. What more could you want? The organizers were glad I was there because I could help out and understood that I was also here to check out the talks and network, so there wasn’t really any secrets. In fact, they even asked me what I thought of the talks and which ones I got to check out. So I got more or less everything I wanted to do if I was a paying member, only for free. As a bonus, there’s no pressure of me getting fired, because, well, I’m not getting paid.
So here’s my suggestion to you: find an event you’re interested in, what you’re REALLY interested it, be it sports, blogging, non-profit organizations, trees, or whatever you want and go straight to their website and find the biggest dude there is. C.E.O, acting manager, whoever you can find. Email him/her, explain why you’re interested in helping out. Maybe they don’t need your help, but they will for sure appreciate it and perhaps remember you when they do need some help. I haven’t tried it myself but it seems like it’d be pretty cool to volunteer at a Canucks game for example. Why not? An email can’t hurt.
Don’t get me wrong, volunteering has many other greater benefits (such as the feel-good moments) but this is just another perk that I don’t think is talked about enough.
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