There is no "I" in Team but there is a "u" in volunteer!

About 8000 community organisations in Quebec are responsible for all the hours of volunteer done in the province. The young people’s biggest motivation for volunteering (91%) is because they believe in the cause or organization they support. Others say they volunteer because they want to use their skills and experiences (73%), to explore their strengths (49%) and to improve job opportunities (47%)…. [1] When people do service learning they have the obligation to do the work and when people do volunteer work, they choose whether they want to do the work or not. When people choose to do the work their intentions are good and the work they do will be done right. People should be able to make the choice to get involved or not. The only right way to help someone is when you do it for the right reasons. When someone volunteers, they are giving some of their time. In other words, volunteering is like making a present of your time to someone or an organisation. In order for a present to be real, it has to be given because someone truly wants to offer it. You cannot force someone to make presents to people.

  

For many reasons people choose to do volunteer work. Unfortunately many choose to not get involved. The ‘’millennium generation’’ born between 1980 and 1995 are now taking over the job market and slowly replacing the baby-boomers that are now more and more retiring. The way they think and do things is different from the past generations. Even though, they are hard workers, they focus more on their success and on themselves. For many, their own interests go before the company they work for or the community’s interests. [2] Because the ‘’millennials’’ are busy, taking care of their own business, they don’t spend time volunteering and giving some of their time to community organisations. This generation is more individualist than the ones before, this would explain why many wouldn’t ‘’waste’’ their time helping 

other people.

I think lots of people think volunteering will take lots of their time but the truth is that organisations know you have many other things to do in your life. If you can’t be there on one day they need you, they will find someone else. They know that when someone volunteers, they do it on their spare time and usually most people don’t have that much spare time which means they won’t be able to be there every time organisations need them. This is another reason why organisations need many volunteers in order to be able to function normally and to be able to always have enough volunteers while not putting pressure on people to always be there.

I think the best way to incite people to volunteer is by making volunteering accessible to everyone. People won’t search and try to find somewhere to volunteer but when it is offered to them or easy to find, they will be more inclined to volunteer. Another way to make people volunteer would be to make them feel good when they do it. Helping people makes you feel good and useful. It is important that when people volunteer, that they are in a positive environment and thanked for what they have done. Most people have lots of things to do and if they don’t feel appreciated where they volunteer they might just keep their time to do something else. I believe people are more inclined to volunteer when they are with friends. Volunteering associations should try to recruit people when they have group activities this way volunteers would be able to be with friends and even make friends while volunteering. This would make the volunteering experience more enjoyable to volunteers. Generally, when people volunteer once, they start doing it on a regular basis. I believe it would be a good idea to try to have as many people to try volunteering once. This would probably make them like it and want to do it again.

---

[1]

Giving and Volunteering in Quebec survey of 1997, http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/files/giving/en/rp_1997_g_and_v_pq_en.pdf

[2]
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4126233n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox