Things to Consider Before You Volunteer

With the new community engagement pillar in NUS, you might be looking out for volunteering opportunities or CCAs to clock in your hours. Before jumping straight into the first volunteering opportunity that comes up, here are five factors you should consider before signing up for volunteer work.

1 Passion?

The easiest way to find out which community you should engage with would first be by identifying your passion. Do you feel strongly for the cause or the community? Do you believe you can impact their lives through your time and effort? While helping any community can be meaningful and you may even learn more about them, more often than not you will likely find it much more meaningful to contribute to a community or cause you are interested in. Interest can be correlated to the effort and energy one invests in a particular activity. The more motivated and willing you are to serve that cause and to find ways to make an impact, the greater change you can make. This knowledge that you have supported a group of individuals important to you can also be an incentive to keep volunteering with them.

From another more individualistic perspective, helping the community you particularly care about can also be incredibly fulfilling to the self. Recognising the effects of your actions through the responses of those who benefitted from your help can be incredibly rewarding. The long hours you have invested in the cause have taken fruition, be it directly through distributing food to the less fortunate or indirectly through watching your mentee slowly opening up to you about their day. This feedback can increase happiness for the individual, especially when you care deeply for that particular cause, providing more emotional reward for your actions and motivating you to keep volunteering. Regardless of the reason behind volunteering – for the community or self, it is, simply put, much more meaningful to be intentional in choosing which community you want to engage with.

2 Don’t be Afraid to Learn Something!

Through helping the community, you can (and probably would have) to learn something new. Soft skills can be nurtured through interacting with a diverse community and these skills can prove useful in social situations you may encounter in the future. During one of my summer volunteering experiences, I recalled how challenging it was to explain a mathematics question to primary school students – not because I was a FASS student, but because of the difficulty of getting the student interested in the subject. I was appalled by how the volunteer next to me could successfully capture their attention through the manner she spoke and reasoned certain terms with them (she managed to bargain for her to do a question in exchange for a piece of candy). This is not to say the solution is sweet treats, but to bring to attention the importance of understanding the community you are engaging with. The amount of patience and tact was commendable and inspirational, and observing that also allowed me to understand more about the students I was engaging with. Certain technical skills are also needed when engaging with some groups of communities. You can pick up sign language when you interact with the hard of hearing or braille when you engage with the visually impaired. These skills can be valuable in situations where you least expect it. With that said, there also needs to be effort put into learning how you can help a community. This allows both you and the recipient to benefit from the process!

3 Are You Doing More Harm Than Good?

While the intention to help is always important, it is not an excuse to help poorly. Not knowing enough can not only negate the help you were intended to provide them with but also potentially bring about negative consequences. For instance, cracking insensitive jokes or giving poorly-thought advice to an impressionable young audience or cultural appropriation when engaging in overseas volunteerism. These behaviours are not excusable as the onus should be on the volunteer to know more about the community they are to engage with in the first place. Moreover, you wouldn’t want to “help” a community only to realise that you have done more harm to them! More often than not, it is difficult to know how you can help a community without some experience. If you lack any, do not fret! Doing some basic research or listening to more experienced individuals share their ideas can be useful to understand more about what you are getting into and how you can provide the beneficiaries with what they need and what is good for them.

4 Managing Time

Lastly, there is the issue of the lack of time – a common struggle for the typical NUS student. In the business of every day, setting aside time can be a challenge that can influence the extent you can give to the community. It is helpful first to determine what your priorities are – is it academics? Student-life? Sleep? While these concepts are not necessarily mutually exclusive, it can be a struggle to juggle with improper time management. The easiest and bare minimum way to show your sincerity when committing to a cause will be through the time and effort you put in. Without this investment of time, you might be better off not committing to the work in the first place!

To End Off…

The new pillar might be a stressor for some – to find ways to clear the hours as fast as possible before diving their head back into the books. However, I find that having some basic understanding of what you are committing to before actually committing to it can be useful and more fulfilling to the experience for you and the community you are engaging with. With all that said, I hope this was useful and all the best in your volunteer experiences!