Why Volunteer?

Through volunteerism, teens have the power to positively impact their community! Have you ever thought about volunteering your time to a community organization? There are many different reasons for you to start volunteering:

• To explore a career
• To improve your communication skills
• To gain work experience for your resume
• To enhance personal development and growth
• To develop new friendships and meet interesting people
• To learn how to bring about community change
• To use individual creativity and explore new ideas and concepts
• To develop leadership sills, gain confidence, and self-esteem
• To learn skills in problem solving
• To fulfill need to achieve
• To increase chances for scholarships
• To help others
• To practice something you're good at, such as music or computers

The "DO's" of Great Volunteering

• Do be flexible. Open-mindedness will help you enjoy your experience even more.
• Do be persistent. If you are not contacted by your volunteer coordinator or agency right away, it doesn't mean they aren't interested. Why not call them?
• Do be responsible. Show up on time and follow through with commitments. Your work ethic now will be your work ethic later in life.
• Do take initiative. You can even start your own volunteer program and do it on your own time.
• Do expect to get plenty of satisfaction and fun from your volunteer experiences.

Here are some areas to think about:

Homeless Shelters
Most homeless shelters welcome volunteers and have a variety of programs through which you can get involved. You might help prepare or distribute meals, work behind the scenes in the business office, help organize a food drive to stock the pantry.

Food Bank
Food banks often work with homeless shelters, but they also serve poor people living in the community (especially around the holidays). Food banks collect food, manage their inventory and distribute food to those in need.

Hospitals
Hospitals have teen volunteer programs to help patients both inside and outside the hospital. The volunteers programs allow participants to explore medical careers and gain work experience.

Libraries
Libraries need help reshelving books, running children's programs, making books available to the community. Teen volunteers can also be trained to assist library staff during the Summer Reading Program.

Senior Citizen Centers
Senior citizen centers offer volunteer programs to provide friendship and community activities to senior citizens.

Animal Shelter
Animal shelters welcome volunteers to help take care of animals, keep facilities clean and work with the public.

Web site creation
Some of the non-profit organizations that we serve do not yet have Web sites. You can help by learning how to create a Web site and volunteering your services. When creating a Web site for a non-profit organization, you will want to take care to understand the organization's needs to establish exactly how they want their Web site to look and feel like.