How old were you when you first started volunteering? Do you even remember volunteering as a child? Was it required by your school or did you volunteer with your family? Ponder these questions while you read.
I first volunteered when I was 11 years old. I helped at my town's 4th of July Parade by spinning cotton candy - and I continued to do that through my high school years. Yes, I am a cotton candy spinning pro and should my non-profit career not workout, I can easily snag a job with the circus. (Mom always told me to have a backup plan!).
As I got older, my volunteering shifted from spinning cotton candy once a year to getting involved with my schools and community, volunteering for different events and programs. Once high school rolled around, I was at a school where community service was a requirement - 20 hours a semester. Add on an additional 30 hours a year if you did Service Club and tack on additional 20 a year if you were in National Honor Society. And of course I had to participate in those things as well most of my time at the school. If I think back, I probably completed between 300 and 400 hours of community service during my time in High School. Hmmm.... the volunteer manager in me is upset I didn't keep a record of how many hours I volunteered to know that stat now. Moving On...
I spent my evenings, weekends and vacation weeks honoring my commitments to service. I taught music lessons at my old junior high and I directed the beginner's band when necessary. I volunteered at our local Children's Museum doing everything from being a costumed character, managing birthday parties and eventually working in the children's library stocking shelves, checking out books and hosting story times. At the time, I enjoyed all of the things I was doing to help (OK, maybe not wearing giant costumes and animal heads or kids throwing birthday cake at me and dumping red punch on me, but I digress), but I still saw it as a "requirement" in order to graduate.
Once college rolled around, I continued to volunteer in my new community. I volunteered in the dorms, for student councils, and at organizations throughout the city. Volunteering in college was not a requirement for me, yet I naturally felt drawn to participate in these areas. I don't know if it was a natural need I had to be engaged, a desire to be helpful, or I was just looking for something to take my mind off of being homesick, but I continued to volunteer for all 4 years at college. By the time my senior year rolled around, I was so enamored with living off campus, trying to wrap things up to graduate and job searching that my volunteering commitments went from a plethora to one (and one that I really wasn't that engaged in either). And I still remember, over 10 years later, feeling as if I had a void in my life during my senior year at college - I just always felt something was missing but couldn't figure it out. My now adult self can pinpoint that void was from not feeling connected and helpful to people and my community.
After college, it was not until I moved to Rhode Island that I picked up with volunteering again. But now, as a young adult, volunteering took on a whole new meaning. I wasn't being asked to volunteer. Volunteering wasn't something I needed on a resume. But it was a way for me to meet people, gain experiences, and give back to this new community I was living in. When I moved here, I had a natural pull to be volunteering. I needed it in my life. Ten years later, I'm still volunteering in Rhode Island, more now than ever.
As a volunteer manager, much of my time is spent finding ways to engage youth and families in volunteering. I recently read a statistic from a 1993 study (yes, outdated, I know) that the earlier children are involved in volunteering, the higher the chances are of them continuing to volunteer in adolescence and adulthood. The study suggested that while many organizations encourage children ages 14-18 to volunteer, they really should be targeting those around the ages of 10-11 or younger to "reduce the erosion in service values and behaviors" (Benson & Roehlkepartain, 1993). This means, if you can get your child volunteering by the age of 10, there's a higher likelihood that the values they gain from volunteering will be instilled within them as they develop in to teens and adults and a higher chance of them continuing to volunteer as an adult.
I am a big proponent for families volunteering together. While some of our projects at Save The Bay need to have an age requirement on them, I still encourage families to participate as a team in any project they meet the requirements for. Volunteering with your children is a great way to create family traditions and memories. Spending time engaged with your children giving back to your community provides the chance for you to learn and grow together as individuals. It's a chance for you to bond with your child in a new way and to have something different to talk about at the family dinner table than work and school. Volunteering with your children helps them learn responsibility for their commitments, their community and others. It allows them the chance to learn outside of the classroom and discover the world with a fresh set of eyes.
There are countless ways to begin volunteering as a family or to engage your children in volunteering. You can start by talking about volunteering and giving back, choosing options as a family to participate in. You can let each child take a turn choosing a project they want to participate in. Talk about what their classmates do with their families, what your friend's families do, what you did as a child. This is the perfect time to talk with your children about how you became engaged with volunteering when "you were their age". And if you couldn't answer any of the questions at the start of this post, then now is the PERFECT time for you to begin your volunteering adventure along with your children, so they can learn the life-long importance of giving back to their community.
Generation On, a fantastic resources for youth and family volunteering, released this video about kids volunteering. It's short, sweet and to the point. Watch it with your kids. Do any of the projects these youth identified in the video sound interesting to your child? Ask them. Then get on the plethora of websites out there to find an opportunity in your area that will engage your children and family. Then go out and volunteer, and keep volunteering. Even when life gets busy and you think there's just no time to be volunteering, there is. Carve out a niche of time in your family schedule and physically write it on the calendar - a weekend morning or afternoon, a weekday night, a day during vacation weeks, one day a month - and commit to it. To a nonprofit organization, it may not matter how much time you can give every month, but the time you can dedicate can mean so much to their mission, programs, constituents and work.
