The college admissions process is, to put it mildly, stressful. Not only do we as students study tirelessly to keep an appealing GPA, trudge through hours of standardized testing, and find the time to somehow attend a hundred club meetings in a week, but now we have to devote our last few spare hours doing volunteer work? What?! Please, I don’t have time for that! At least, that’s what I used to think when I spent my summers begrudgingly volunteering at a local thrift shop. Yeah. Try spending eight hours organizing donations without air conditioning in the middle of central Florida for five days straight, and then talk to me about your enthusiasm for volunteer work. Anybody up for the challenge? Mhm. That’s what I thought. So, the question remains: why bother volunteering? When it comes to service work, it’s important to realize that, similar to an actual career, not all volunteer positions fit everyone. It’s one thing to just log hundreds of hours for the sake of mildly impressing a college admissions officer, but the actual goal should be maximizing your utility. Let’s face it: We’re high school students. We’re busy; even if we’re procrastinating, we’re busy. Volunteering isn’t exactly at the top of anyone’s priority list, so finding a non-profit organization that clicks with you is the first step to enjoying (tolerating?) volunteering. ****Source: http://goo.gl/yvnzky

1. Benefits of Volunteering
Aninda Mukherjee

2. First benefit of volunteering
• Learn or develop new skill: As Mahatma Gandhi has
rightly said,” Live as if you were to die tomorrow and
learn as if you were to live forever.”

3. Second benefit of volunteering
• Be a part of your community: No men or women is an island.
Volunteering is ultimately about helping others and having an impact on
people’s wellbeing. What better way is there to connect with your
commmunity and give a little back? As a volunteer, you certainly return
to society some of the benefits that society gives you.

4. Third Benefit of Volunteering
• Motivation and sense of achievement: Volunteers
predominantly express a sense of achievement and motivation, and this is
ultimately generated from your desire and enthusiasm to help. Sometimes
volunteers are regarded as do-gooders and those that hold that view also
assume that one person can never make a difference. It may be true that
no one person can solve all the world’s problems, but what you can do is
make that little corner of the world where you live just that little bit
better.

5. Fourth Benefit of Volunteering
• Boost your career options: A survey carried out by TimeBank
through Reed Executive showed that among 200 of the UK’s leading businesses
• 73% of employers would recruit a candidate with volunteering experience over
one without
• 94% of employers believe that volunteering can add to skills
• 94% of employees who volunteered to learn new skills had benefited either by
getting their first job, improving their salary, or being promoted

6. Fifth Benefit of Volunteering
• New experiences: Volunteering is a brilliant way to get life
experience. Whether you build a library or mail flyers to raise awareness
for a local charity, you will experience the real world through hands-on
work. It is established that volunteers can do almost anything and with
the new millenium has dawned an era of infinite volunteer opportunities.

7. Sixth Benefit Of Volunteering
• Meeting a diverge range of people: Volunteering
brings together a diverse range of people from all backgrounds and walks
of life. Both the recipients of your volunteer efforts and your co-workers
can be a rich source of inspiration and an excellent way to develop your
interpersonal skills.

8. Thank You!!!