Growing up, volunteering was taught to be an action that gave you a sense of honor. There are many clubs, organizations, and even employers nowadays that place major emphasis on volunteering. My current employer offers 16 paid community service hours because one of their core values is to be an active community outreach partner. Nerds Abroad also strives to serve the community close to home and around the world through volunteering.
Three ways that volunteering serves: through community outreach, personal growth, and by helping nonprofits who need people power. Have you ever walked away from a volunteer experience feeling inspired by the people that you met? Volunteering is all about networking and meeting people within the community to expand your knowledge and experiences. You never know how those people might influence you later on. Nerds Abroad is still getting started, but the work that we have been able to do thus far with other nonprofits has opened doors and windows of communication that we are finding extremely helpful right now.
By volunteering, you are taking the first step in making a change within yourself. Compassion is one of the first things you start to experience when volunteering. Not only can you walk away from an experience feeling good because of who you might have met, but you can feel good because you did something out of the ordinary to help your community. You are being placed in someone else’s shoes for the day and all the things you once took for granted come to perspective.
Last, but not least, the last piece to volunteering is you are providing a service to an organization who needs it. Nonprofits are not in the business of making money (or, shouldn’t be) and greatly value through volunteerism. Startup nonprofits who are still getting their feet on the ground need people to help do the serve the community and grow the organization Volunteers provide a tremendous amount of relief to nonprofits by donating their time and energy towards completing tasks that could have taken hours to complete. Nonprofits would not exist without the help of the community and Nerds Abroad is right there with them.
Right now we are partnered with a few different non-profits such as NCompass, Kizimani and Global ADE. Check out these links if you are interested in further getting involved! (Click on the logos) You never know what might come out of the experience until you say YES!
