Everything you do makes a difference, together we can do so much more
We value every volunteer as families are busier than ever before. Between your work, education, activities and hobbies it’s hard to find time to reach out and connect with others; Thank you.
How does volunteering help you and your family?
1. Build empathy and connection
Learning compassion on an everyday basis can be difficult for even the best of us. Spending focused time helping others helps build compassion in a way that’s hard to replicate. Volunteering helps connect you to others in your community. Volunteering will increase your social circle as you spend time with people you may not normally see. It connects you with a shared community priority and allows your entire family to make friendships.
2. Improve your health
Volunteering can actually improve both your mental and physical health. If you or someone in your family struggling with mental or emotional health issues, volunteering can help counteract stress, depression, and anxiety. Volunteering can also help increase your happiness levels as you serve and help others. In addition to these amazing mental health benefits, studies have found that volunteers have lower mortality rates than non-volunteers. Volunteering can improve chronic pain symptoms and reduce your chance for heart disease. Pretty amazing, right?
3. Enhance your family time
Although any time spent together in positive activities is good for your family, volunteering can bring your family time to another level. Volunteering together as a family will give your family a purpose. Your kids will learn from your example as you share your empathy and compassion with others. It’ll give you common ground as a family and allow you to share something you’re passionate about.
4. Strengthen your skills and abilities
While most volunteer work can be done by anyone, you and your kids will learn valuable skills and abilities. It’ll help your entire family learn more about teamwork and accomplishing something as a group. Learning through volunteering helps your child develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills as well as organisation and execution skills. In fact, volunteering has been shown to promote higher grade point averages and academic confidence.
It’s easy to think you should volunteer more as a family. It’s a lot harder to actually make it happen.
Be yourself, make it your own
You don’t have to spend hours and hours. In fact, most volunteering opportunities only require an hour or two a week.
Choose something fun. If the idea of spending hours serving soup at the soup kitchen doesn’t sound fun, choose something else.
Discuss your options as a family so everyone has a say.
Unless you make a conscious effort to volunteer together, it probably won’t happen. Put it on the schedule and let the fun begin.
