When you live your university years outside your country or city and become independent for the first time, you are at that moment when you let your hair down and start to manage your own life, you feel powerful and want to eat the world and do thousands of trips and things, among them, many of you consider volunteering.
The university is the perfect place to look beyond your immediate circle, discover your passions and launch yourself into activities that until now were unknown to you. All this without forgetting that your studies are your priority, but both professional and personal growth are not acquired only in the classroom.
In our student flats in Barcelona, there are many students with clear ideas, a lot of decision and with the desire to improve the world by helping other people, so they participate, or join, volunteer programs for students.
Do you want to know how they do it and what they do in these volunteer programs for students?
Volunteering is pure self-fulfillment, getting to know new realities and contributing to the common good in a different way.
The reality is not just your Instagram friends, the people we have coffee with in the university cafeteria or go out with in the Barcelona nightlife. There are thousands of groups and initiatives that need selfless collaboration to get ahead.
From our point of view, volunteering brings you things like this:
It's not the elixir of eternal youth, but there are studies that show that those who volunteer are healthier and longer-lived. Also, if at some point you don't find meaning in your life, maybe volunteering will help you discover your purpose.
You will meet people with whom you share interests and values: you will be surrounded by students and workers from different careers and specialties with whom you will enrich your training and grow personally.
You will acquire skills to master job interviews: many companies want to improve the world from their area and many of them know that volunteering is a master's degree in teamwork. It also shows that you are an active person.
You will increase your productivity: Volunteering gives you a feeling of being more efficient, lowers your stress levels and generates greater productivity in whatever task you set yourself.
Not everything is learned in the classroom, but it helps you to improve in class: Volunteering gives you the opportunity to develop skills that you will be able to apply not only in class but also in the world of work. Patience for the eternal group work in which you will surely not agree on everything at first, to get by better in public speaking for job interviews or to get skills for your future job interviews.
You will face the working world with experience in the CV: in a volunteer you will have to face real situations in which you will learn to manage yourself, besides that you will be able to ask for letters of recommendation and your experience will be demonstrable.
Are you up for it?