Volunteering is a form of self-care.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and volunteering is a two-way street when it comes to mental health.
When you help others, your brain releases oxytocin, a hormone that boosts your mood and lowers cortisol, the stress hormone.
Volunteering also helps to make a tangible impact when you don’t always have the power to see the direct results of your work within a big corporation.
When I decided to join Impact Sierra Leone and Educate. Elevate. Radiate, I was looking to find a way to empower young girls and women through initiatives that result in reducing poverty in the United States and Sierra Leone. Albeit, I don’t have extensive experience, both nonprofits gave me a chance to integrate their committees to share my skills with a kind heart.
Through Educate. Radiate and Elevate, I am learning new skills as Fundraising Committee Member on how to raise money for the organization and to build robust emails campaign to get donations. You can find my story here.
Volunteering is a fantastic way to use your skills in an impactful way to give back and make a difference for a cause or a nonprofit that doesn’t always have the time and the necessary resource to move forward.
For instance, Impact Sierra Leone is a young nonprofit. I am excited to be part of their journey. To help them accomplish their goals with my digital marketing skills is incredible. I enjoy helping them grow their reach and impact and the relationships they form with potential donors, partners, and professional volunteers that would otherwise not be possible given how deep the founders are busy managing the nonprofit and making an impact.
As a board member director, I can learn from the other member with different skills and get to know how the nonprofit goals and how to stay sustainable and effective. I am glad to offer support beyond grant dollars to ensure they can achieve their important mission.
In his book “Inspired”, Marty Cagan says that we should all be missionaries, not mercenaries, when building products.
We must define our mission based on empathy for the people we seek to serve.
Hence our mission with Impact Sierra Leone is to reduce socioeconomic challenges in Sierra Leone through empowerment, education, and building strong partnerships with the Diaspora community.
Another great example with Steve Jobs; he was arguably the best product visionary in history to understand customers’ needs before realizing they wanted it. You don’t have to be a Steve Jobs to know that virtually everyone wants less friction in the products and services they consume. And there are a lot of opportunities to do it with just a few simple steps, just as I am learning from my volunteering experience.
