Love Volunteering

This Valentine’s Day we bring you 5 reasons to embark on a love affair with volunteering!

#1: Love supporting a cause you care about

Volunteering a great way to get involved with a cause you feel passionately about. Perhaps you want to join the fight against an illness that has touched your life, or that of a friend or family member. Maybe you’re an irrepressible animal lover unable to keep a pet in your rented home. Whatever your motivation, it’s your passion that will have you jumping out of bed to make a difference on a rainy Saturday morning.

#2: Love making new friends

Volunteering is a brilliant way to meet new people and find out more about what’s going on in your community. It can be hard to make new friends when you’re juggling a busy schedule or are just stuck in a bit of a “life rut”. Meeting lots of different kinds of people through volunteering also has one added bonus – you’ll all have a shared passion for a particular cause, so no awkward silences. Who knows, you may even find your valentine!

#3: Love learning new skills

It’s never too late to learn something new. Always dreamed of being a green-fingered goddess? Help out at a community garden and in no time you’ll be distinguishing your daisies from your dahlias. Exploring a career in law? Why not get a taste of the industry and volunteer with a human rights group or victim support? Practically all volunteer work requires developing key skills such as team-working, communication and relationship-building, none of which will do any harm to your CV!

#4: Love feeling good

Environmental charities are always looking for people to get stuck into a wide range of physical tasks – the perfect alternative to pricey fitness classes. Or why not check out GoodGym? This organisation combine regular exercise with doing good in their communities. Did you know that research by the Harvard School of Public Health has even suggested that people who volunteer lead longer, healthier lives, spending 38% less time in hospital!

#5: Love giving back

Doing something good for others fills us with an awesome feeling of accomplishment and a great sense of purpose – hello self-confidence, self-esteem and life satisfaction! Doing something to help others your community is an incredibly strong motivator, giving us new perspective and helping us feel grateful for the good stuff we have in our lives. Heard of the “helper’s high”? Endorphins are released when we do a good deed much the same way as with exercise. Looking for a rush? Try volunteering!

This article was originally published on Do-It and appears here with permission.