Why I Volunteer

Throughout my high school career I have always been told, always give back to your community. This has stuck with me throughout my life, and I have always wanted to better my community and find ways to help. Through this time in the pandemic, it was a struggle to find different things to do for our community. Most places were not accepting of certain things due to the thought of spreading the COVID-19 virus. It took some time and thinking and reaching out to certain places but I finally came up with a project called, Sock-it-to-me-Sock-Drive. I started this drive on October 27, 2020, to benefit local homeless shelters in their #1 most needed item but mostly forgotten. There is a strategy for finding ways to help YOUR community, I am going to list some steps on how to become more involved in your community that helped me become successful through my journey.

The first step in becoming more involved in your community and coming up with ideas to uplift your community is finding a goal. When I first started the Sock-it-to-me-Sock-Drive my goal was to collect 100 pairs of socks. That sounded impossible to reach but I worked hard and promoted the drive and ended up collecting 519 pairs of socks.

How were you able to collect so many pairs of socks? Well, the second step to becoming successful is through promoting your project. A lot of my donations came through my social media post and different links I had created so people were able to donate. I had created a wishlist on amazon for any nonlocal friends or families that wished to donate, made flyers with information regarding the drive and a listed number to call or text for pickups, and posted them up on local restaurants and in different classrooms and bulletin boards within my school community.

Where did the socks go? The next step is communication. You need to come in contact with different shelters to see who is in need of the socks. The different shelters that I had donated to were the Albion Fellows Bacon Center, Isaiah’s Project, and Evansville Hangers. I needed to reach out to different shelters and organizations to help out the most in need.

Lastly, enjoy what you are doing, and always remember why you are doing it. You will not be successful in your community service project if you do not go out full-heartedly to help out your community.

Throughout my high school career, I have always been told to volunteer to help out my community. I have been involved with my church community and school community; I believe through volunteering I am able to make a difference in hopes of a closer community. I volunteer at my church weekly, feeding anyone who is welcome a nutritious meal. This is something I always look forward to, I enjoy conversing with people from my community and hearing their stories. I also volunteer heavily in my school community through different clubs such as the student council and the national honor society. There are different ways that I go about being successful in volunteering.

How do I go about volunteering? I want to volunteer, but how do I? I started volunteering when I was in 8th grade, and I started volunteering for Relay for Life. Relay for Life is a community fundraising event to raise money for the American Cancer Society. I was involved due to my great-grandfather passing away due to pancreatic cancer, and my godmother passing away due to breast cancer. I helped out my family by running a booth in honor of them. I started volunteering through a family function, but anyone is open to communicating to different organizations about needing your help.

Why should I volunteer? Your community needs YOUR help. Sometimes people may find it important for them to give back to their community, and some may find it intriguing to help people, and some others may find it as a way to increase their interpersonal skills. All of these are important reasons why you should volunteer, but for you to be successful and find the want to volunteer, you need to figure out the reason why YOU want to volunteer, what is important to you?

Lastly, same as community service, enjoy what you are doing, and always remember why you are doing it. This is vital in becoming involved in your community through volunteering.

Both community service and volunteering go hand-in-hand when talking about community involvement. But each of these plays a very important role in the community. In each society, there is always something that needs improvement or an organization that needs YOUR help. Put yourself out there and promote yourself, let companies and organizations know you are willing to help out; or find the most needed item your local shelters need and give. So, next time you are laying in your bed, or couch think about your community and how you can help it.