Giving Out Smiles...

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The Benefits Of Volunteering

Volunteering your time to help others is something that will make you feel good each morning, knowing you are making a difference. There are many ways to volunteer, and many organizations who could desperately use more volunteers.

Take a look at the things you enjoy doing, then see if there are any organizations in your area related to those things. If you enjoy building and working with tools, look for an organization that helps build houses for families near the poverty level. If you enjoy working with animals, there are always organizations and rescues, specializing in your typical pets like dogs and cats to large animals like horses and other farm animals to even the more unusual like reptiles or amphibians.

Animal rescues are always in need of volunteers for one task or another. If you just enjoy helping people, volunteer at the local homeless shelter to serve food or to cook, if you have culinary skills. You do not just have to volunteer with an organization, either. Could your elderly neighbor use help with their garden, and perhaps you love flowers?

Volunteer to spend an afternoon planting and pruning. You will be glad you did, and for those trying to watch their weight to keep physically fit, getting out and volunteering your time will burn more calories than sitting at home doing nothing at all.

So, you find an organization you would like to volunteer with, but you do not know what to volunteer to do? Ask them what they are in need of doing. Assess your skills and talents, and tell them the things you do best that could potential benefit them. If you are well-organized and business like, perhaps the office files and paperwork could use a better system. If you are good with computers and web design, volunteer to help with the website, and if they do not have a website, volunteer to get one up and running. If you volunteer with an animal group, and just enjoy time with animals, volunteer to walk the dogs, or feed the pets, clean out water bowls, or just spend time socializing with the different pets, preparing them for their new homes. If you have a good imagination and creativity, and could come up with different, exciting ideas for fund raising, offer to help with starting up fundraisers.

Organizations are always in need of donations and additional funds for the various expenses. Depending on the organization, you can come up with an enormous variety of ways to get the community involved.

Volunteering is a very unselfish thing to do to help the community, but if you think about it, you still see benefits.

You feel better, knowing you are serving others, helping in ways needed.

You keep active, and not waiting at home for the next daytime drama on television.

Volunteer work looks good on resumes as well, so that next job search might benefit from your volunteer work.

Employers who see someone willing to work, without payment, knows the person is probably a good worker.

Perhaps the best benefit you can get however, is smiles. Whatever you volunteer to do, whether helping build houses, care for rescued animals, helping your neighbor, or one of a thousand other way to volunteer, you will see smiles, from the family moving into their brand new house to the little boy with his new puppy.

Those smiles are the compensation for hours of work on the part of everyone, and they are more than enough payment, because you helped bring a little more happiness in the world, and that is the reason volunteers are such very special people.

by Susanna Parker.