Although it is natural that we as students mostly engage and associate ourselves with other students, I believe we tend to forget how much students can have an impact on Southampton as a local community.
Ever since I got to England I’ve always felt it would be nice to give something back to Southampton as a city - after all this is my home now. This brings me on to the topic I want to discuss in this blog post; volunteering.
I’ve been volunteering as a Befriender for Age UK Southampton since February of this year. It is something I have thought about for a long time. There is definitely not a shortage of volunteering opportunities in Southampton, but it’s all about finding an association that fits you.
I chose Age UK because I cannot imagine anything worse than feeling isolated and alone, especially at an older age. Being a Befriender means that they set you up with an elderly person who needs a bit of company once a week, mostly it’s around an hour, which I believe everyone has spare in a week. They currently have a long waiting list of people who want a Befriender and, with the amount of people who live in Southampton, it shouldn’t be like that.
Most elderly people want a befriender during the day-time. However, most people who work can’t spare the time until after-work hours or during the weekend when the need isn’t that big. That’s why students with flexible timetables are a great fit as Befrienders!
Volunteering isn’t just a one-way thing, it is genuinely very rewarding to feel and see that you can make a difference to someone’s life and that’s why I have chosen to write about my experience in this blog post.
For me, volunteering means visiting my new friend once a week for about one hour. With travel time, I probably spend around two hours a week on this, which is nothing compared to the time I procrastinate or do other irrelevant things. The big difference is that volunteering isn’t irrelevant. For example, I have now learnt a lot of new English words through playing scrabble and I continue to learn and hear new things all the time I spend volunteering.
Therefore, if there is anyone out there who wants to volunteer, but doesn’t really know where to start, I have three tips:
- Firstly, find out what you want to do and who you want to work with. For example you could work with elderly people, homeless people or animals.
- Secondly, when you have established who you want to work with, find out who you want to volunteer for. For example, there are a number of volunteering societies at the in the Students' Union, which offers you a great range of organisations you can volunteer with. Our Careers and Employability team can also help with finding you a role with their Volunteering Bank. Alternatively, you can simply Google your way to an organisation and contact them directly!
- Thirdly, find out what fits your timetable and explain to the organisation so you can work out a good plan. I have chosen to do my volunteering on a day I don’t have any lectures.
In case you are not in Southampton at the moment, this is the sunshine you are missing out on.
I hope that you consider doing some volunteering in the future – it’s definitely very rewarding and I highly recommend it! Not only are you helping others, but it can teach you new things and also looks great on your CV!
Alexandra
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