There are a number of means of volunteering-- helping out with some trail maintenance, lending a hand at the local animal shelter, giving out food at the soup kitchen in town, etc. The list goes on and on, and while the labor volunteers perform may vary in innumerable ways, there's a common handful of lessons that volunteering will teach you, no matter what kind of work it is that you're putting in.
Integrity
Intermountain Forest Service on Flickr
Working for money isn't always easy per se, but it certainly is nice knowing that you will be rewarded monetarily for your labor at some point in the future-- volunteering doesn't work that way. In the absence of tangible reimbursement, it's easy to feel as though your efforts are being wasted, especially if you're doing particularly difficult or unpleasant work. In addition to the blatant lack of physical incentive to volunteer, oftentimes the work is unsupervised, strengthening the urge to be hasty, lazy, or otherwise careless in your work. You could just not work at all, for that matter. It is in times like these when integrity is key. The work must get done, and the reason is simple: it's the right thing to do. Not because you want a pay check, or because someone is watching you, but because it is the right thing to do.
It Feels Good To Make a Difference
Volunteer work may often feel tedious and insignificant, but you never really know who your work will touch. For example, I recently volunteered at a nature park thirty minutes down the road from where I'm living for the summer. I've grown up around the area, and had never even heard of this place or the organization that managed it. While I worked on the trails throughout the park for nearly a month, I saw innumerable faces (as well as an abundance of pups who I'm sure appreciated no longer eating overgrowth as they walked on the trails) utilizing the trail system at the park. Even in the middle of the week, people would come and walk during their lunch break or in the evening before they went home after work. A handful of them noticed my tools and thanked me for the trail maintenance I had done, and as cliche as it may sound, the slightest appreciation for my work made it all worth it (except maybe the poison ivy).
It's Nice To Make Your Own Schedule
To some, I'm sure the American Dream is working a high paying, reliable 9-5 job. Others, like myself, shoot for the moon; we want to make our own schedules. Whether that takes a managerial position, ownership of a company or organization, or some other means of pulling those strings, I want to be able to work around all of my "extracurricular" passions. While not always the case, volunteer work often works this way. Since they aren't paying you, it makes sense than you can show up or leave on your own terms. Because of my community service's flexible nature, I was able to make it to the river to kayak with my friends a couple times I wouldn't have been able to given a rigid schedule. I compensated for work missed by showing up early, staying late, and simply doing whatever it took to get it done; but, it was on my terms. If I can manage to land a career like that, I'll be happy as can be.
People Care
As aforementioned, I had never heard of Monteith Farmstead Nature Park before I did community service there, and considering I had virtually grown up in the area hiking and partaking in other outdoor recreation, I figured it was a pretty unpopular destination. I didn't think people really cared about these short hiking trails or the Watershed Association of the Tuck who was responsible for the quaint little park situated on the Tuckaseegee River. Boy, was I wrong-- there were probably upwards of a hundred people who clearly did care about these trails and the natural environment surrounding them. My final day of community service was spent helping out with an annual event the Watershed Association of the Tuck throws for surrounding Cherokee kids in which they educate them about the river and wildlife within it, and these elementary and middle school aged kids were captivated-- it was unlike any classroom I've ever seen. if that doesn't show what this river, environment, and organization mean to people, I don't know what does.
