Volunteering: Using Your Passion to Find Unique Opportunities

Volunteering is one of those things that college admission officers are supposedly keen on seeing on applications. Yet I suspect these admission officers are rather good at spotting the less-than-wholehearted volunteering that many high school students do.

What do I mean by this? I mean the routine volunteering that obviously was done as part of a group (no initiative on the student’s part) or volunteering that is the same-old as everyone else, such as collecting food items for a food pantry. Yes, a food drive is a good thing to do, but it probably doesn’t count as much of a volunteer activity in the eyes of college admission officers.

What should you do to show wholehearted volunteering? Take your passion and see if you can use this interest as a basis for volunteering.

Here are some ideas:

You love playing the piano, but you take piano lessons like thousands of other high school students. To distinguish yourself from the pack, you volunteer every Saturday morning to perform show tunes at the retirement home near where you live. The retirement home residents are thrilled by the entertainment, and you’re thrilled to do a volunteer activity of something you love

Or you love knitting scarves and hats for your friends. You find out that a women’s group has a project of knitting scarves and hats for a local homeless shelter. You volunteer to attend the weekly “knitting meetings” where you knit these items and learn from the women in the group.

Or you spend all your free time with a basketball and a net. But your mother says you better find some volunteer activity. You go to the local youth center and volunteer to coach young children on basketball skills.

What ideas do you have for combining your passion and volunteering into a project that you initiate and that differentiates you from the pack in the eyes of college admission officers?

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Volunteering for College Applications – and for Life

Most high school students applying to college know that volunteering activities are important to have on their resumes. Yet, as with everything else on a good resume, there’s volunteering and there’s volunteering.

It’s easy, for example, to volunteer to help with a food collection drive sponsored by your high school. Any student can do that simply by signing up and following through.

Yet, for the other kind of volunteering, what about coming up with a volunteer project yourself that demonstrates initiative, creativity and results?

As described in my post today at www.dogooderscrooge.blogspot.com, I’ve just returned from the Philadelphia wedding of my nephew. It was a lovely, lovely wedding, and I cried as the bride and groom stood under the chupah. Yet I also cried much later in the evening – while a fantastic band played – when I opened the wedding guest gift:

Each guest received a gift certificate for $18 (in Hebrew 18 represents chai – life) to www.donorschoose.org – a nonprofit website where “public school teachers submit proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn.” And then donations bring these dreams to life.

At the wedding I talked to my nephew about the gift certificates. He said he and his bride-to-be had been thinking of giving each guest a $10 gift when they realized what they could do with a different kind of wedding guest gift.

This morning I went to www.donorschoose.org/gift to redeem my gift certificate. There were so many good projects from which to choose. And any of these projects could be the basis of initiating your own volunteer project.

Example of creating your own volunteer project

Let’s suppose you read the following project listed at www.donorschoose.org/gift

Pushing Our Way into Literacy: Book Carts For the Classroom

Last week was Teen Read Week. The media specialist and I created a book cart around the theme Get Active and visited 28 classrooms during the week. With each class, we did a book pass of books we thought would be high interest reads for the students and then allowed them to check out books. During the week, there was a 280% increase in the number of books checked out. We received an overwhelmingly positive response from the staff as well, who reported that for the first time their students were reading.

We would now like to purchase a number of carts to create themed book mobiles for teachers to check out. We know that reading comprehension is the most critical component of student education, and placing high interest reads into the hands of our kids is the key to developing that comprehension.

I need two book carts to enable me to provide high interest young adult reading materials to the students in my school. The cost of this proposal is $833, which includes shipping for any materials requested and fulfillment.

You could take this idea and brainstorm with friends, family, teachers or mentors how to adapt to your own community. Maybe you and three friends could make presentations in classrooms of your favorite books, and your enthusiasm could ignite the interest of students who normally don’t read books.

Or you and three friends could raise money to send to www.donorschoose.org to support this project. And you could offer to send a letter about books you enjoy to the project creator to share with the school’s students.

If you’re going to spend time volunteering – make that volunteer time truly count. Start a new volunteer project that shows your initiative, creativity and commitment.

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Wounded Warrior Project Offers Opportunities for Volunteering

If you’re looking for a project for which to volunteer, consider the Wounded Warrior Project, whose purpose is:

• To raise aware and enlist the public’s aid for the needs of severely injured service men and women
• To help severely injured service members aid and assist each other
• To provide unique, direct programs and service to meet their needs

Right now the organization’s three-day Wounded Warrior Project Soldier Ride “White House to Lighthouse Challenge” is taking place.

The ride began with an address from President Bush at the White House, and the website for the Wounded Warrior Project gives this schedule for the three days:

• On Thursday, April 24th, Soldier Ride will start at the White House, stop at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and continue to Baltimore. This day of riding is by invitation only.
• On Friday, the ride will begin with a "support the troops" rally at Baltimore Maryland's Inner Harbor Harborplace Ampitheater at 10 am and proceed to Jonas Green Park in Annapolis. The kickoff event will honor the wounded veterans and the recently redeployed 58th Infantry Brigade of the Maryland Army National Guard.
• On Saturday, the ride begins and ends at Jonas Green Park in Annapolis. The riders will ride through historic Annapolis, the US Naval Academy, and along the Chesapeake Bay.

On the website under “Get Involved” are many different kinds of ways to help, and volunteering can address the organization’s slogan “the greatest casualty is being forgotten.”

Wounded Warrior Project is one organization that lets severely wounded soldiers know that the general public cares about them. This project deserves to be supported – learn more at http://woundedwarriorproject.org.