Volunteering
With over 45,000 volunteers in Aberdeen city, volunteering is clearly a popular and rewarding activity for many people. This section of StudentNet aims to tell you a little more about volunteering, and how you can get involved.
What is volunteering?
The UK Government recently defined volunteering as “any non-compulsory activity which involves spending time, doing something which is of benefit to other”.
This means that volunteering can be anything that you do to help others. You might already be volunteering without even realising it, for example helping an elderly relative do their shopping, or taking your neighbour’s children to school means you are doing something to benefit somebody else.
Of course you can get involved in more formalised volunteering, and there are hundreds of volunteering opportunities across Scotland, and further, available.
What’s in it for me?
Volunteering while you are a student is ideal. Students often have spare time, and gaining new transferable skills are invaluable for when you have finished studying, and you are competing with others for full time jobs. You can also get an award to show what you have achieved.
Some of the benefits of volunteering are:
- Learning new skills and gaining experience
- Enhances your CV and improves your prospects of getting a job
- Helps you meet new people and socialise
- Makes you feel good, and that you’ve achieved a worthwhile activity
- Helps your local community
- Increases your confidence
- Gives you new challenges
- Helps you develop new talents, and explore future career paths
It’s just working in charity shops isn’t it?
Hardly! There are thousands of volunteering opportunities in a wide range of areas, all needing dedicated and enthusiastic individuals who want to make a difference in other’s lives. Fancy working on local radio, helping out at Scouts meetings, helping at events, coaching sports teams or travelling abroad to help other in need? These are just some of the many examples of how you can get involved in volunteering.
There are also a growing number of micro-volunteers who do their volunteering online. This is especially helpful if you would like to get involved but are worried that you wouldn’t be able to get transport, and offers a greater degree of flexibility about when you can volunteer. Often this will involve researching online, creating web sites or databases or moderating chat rooms.
Where can I find out more?
You can visit Aberdeen College’s Volunteering Co-ordinator, Joan Bramley, in Room SG7 or contact her on j.bramley@abcol.ac.uk
Alternately you can visit www.volunteeraberdeen.org.uk/ to get some advice from the Aberdeen Volunteer Centre to find out more about volunteering opportunities.
Other links include: