It’s Student Volunteering Week!
Volunteering provides a diverse set of opportunities and avenues for both personal and professional growth. By dedicating time and skills to important causes, volunteering has the potential to shape perspectives and foster an important sense of purpose. It further offers a space to cultivate empathy and understanding of the communities around us.
For Student Volunteering Week we spoke to Chiara, a recent addition to the Fight For Sight/Vision Foundation team, about her unique perspective to the world of volunteering as a student and what the five most important things she learnt were:
1) Volunteering gives you the opportunity to develop skills you wouldn’t usually have exposure to, such as project management and client/stakeholder communication
You can volunteer almost anywhere which means you can learn a plethora of skills volunteering and its especially useful if you don’t know what you want to learn but just want to build up your repertoire of skills!
2) Develops your time management skills
Fitting in volunteering around paid work, education and life is a great way to learn to manage your time effectively.
3) Grows your fundamental administrative skills such as working on Teams, answering phone calls and responding to queries
Skills such as writing formal emails, using software such as Teams and Zoom and responding to queries in a timely manner, aren’t necessarily taught anywhere but in the workplace. However certain volunteering opportunities can give you the chance to learn and hone these skills in a safe environment that you can grow in.
4) Provides the opportunity to enhance your emotional intelligence
Depending on where you work you can really build upon and expand your emotional intelligence by interacting with people with various needs that might require nuance in how they are supported, such as those experiencing mental health problems, those who need physical support and more. Doing this can make you feel part of your community and adds another layer of empathy and understanding.
5) You can learn how to be more responsible
Learning how to be responsible for important tasks such as money handling and closing up a shop or office are important transferable skills for future jobs!
Why volunteers are so important to Vision Foundation
Volunteers are at the heart of what we do, helping us reach more of the 200,000 blind and partially sighted people in London.
To save sight and change lives, we need to build a movement of generous people like you who want to make a difference by supporting us in our charity shops or elsewhere in the community. Join us in making a difference.
