Words by Smiley Team
Have you ever thought about volunteering – but not quite made the commitment?
Well, Janet Thorne, CEO of Reach Volunteering is here to inspire you.
Reach Volunteering specialises in skills-based volunteering, which is people volunteering professional expertise that they have from their day job. Or they could have gotten it from volunteering, but basically it's their professional skills which they're donating to a charity.
"You might work in a team where you are surrounded by people who have similar expertise to you, so you might not even realise how valuable and unique your skills are. But when you go and take those to a small organisation, which is really staffed by generalists, your skills and expertise will be so valuable."
"It can be whatever cause speaks to you – it might be the environment and climate action. It might be to help work with refugees, it might be your local community, could be a specific health issue. The list is really long, but whatever speaks to you, you can find an organisation somewhere that will definitely need your expertise, which is working in that area."
"People volunteer for a number of reasons – often a combination of reasons – but it can be a sense of solidarity out of the group that they're working with. You can get great growth – professional and personal development – out of it. You can get a really lovely sense of belonging by being deeply involved and finding a bigger purpose in your life."
"There's a lot of evidence to show that volunteering makes people happier in a more holistic way."
"There are so many huge crises at the moment, and there will be for the next few years, and the world really needs you to get involved. It is going to take all of us to solve them So please, please volunteer."
GET INVOLVED: Head to Reach Volunteering to search among the many opportunities they have.
