Here’s a simple, empowering, and positive step for sustainability this week: volunteer. “Local volunteerism is a fundamental resilience strategy and a property of resilient communities,” reports the United Nations Volunteers program. Studies show that “volunteering helps counteract the effects of stress, anger, and anxiety.” Today’s post shares effective strategies for connecting with people in your community to do useful work that benefits everyone—including you!

Results You Can Measure

Give yourself and your team some extra motivation to get out there and do the volunteering that makes our world a better place for everyone. Seek out volunteer projects that benefit our environment, and set a goal for how many volunteer hours per person you’ll contribute this year.

Volunteering

What is volunteering? A helpful definition, thanks to our friends Down Under, is “time willingly given for the common good and without financial gain.” Here in the United States, AmeriCorps studies two categories of volunteerism:

  1. Informal Helping: assisting others outside of an organizational context, including doing favors for neighbors.

  2. Formal Volunteering: helping others through organizations.

On average, people in America volunteer 50 hours per year. Veterans volunteer more than people who haven’t served in the military. Those who volunteer one hundred or more hours per year are some of the healthiest people in the United States.

Volunteering can be as easy as checking in with your friends and neighbors and seeing if they need a hand with anything. But sometimes asking for help can be harder than offering to help. Keep in mind that people willing to accept volunteer help are the “job creators” of the volunteering world—if you have a need for unpaid help and aren’t afraid to accept it, you’re creating a volunteer opportunity!

Once you’ve satisfied all the demand for volunteer hours among people you know, you can tap into a well-organized network for formal volunteering. With the help of an organization dedicated to volunteering, you can seek out opportunities to prevent pollution, conserve biodiversity, and increase community resilience. Here are a few ideas if you’re looking to invest your volunteering time to work with friendly people to protect our planet—regardless of political point of view.

Rotary International is a global network of more than one million “people of action” in more than 45,000 local clubs who are dedicated to promoting peace; fighting disease; providing clean water, sanitation, and hygiene; saving mothers and children; supporting education; growing local economies; and protecting the environment. For more than a century, Rotarians around the world have been volunteering their time to take action on sustainable projects to better our world. Chances are there is a Rotary club near you that welcomes guests and is looking for new members.

Points of Light engages nearly four million volunteers across 38 countries to solve our world’s most urgent problems, using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a unified approach. November 23, 2024, is Family Volunteer Day, a global celebration of “the incredible impact families can make when they unite to support their communities and neighborhoods.”

Environmental organizations and government agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, need volunteers to participate in a wide range of citizen science projects. An online search using the phrase “citizen science opportunities” and the name of your state or town can help you find interesting projects that will take you outside and give you a richer appreciation of our amazing Earth and our fellow passengers on our endless journey around our sun.

Thanks to the Internet, you can now volunteer to protect our planet from home, if that works better for your circumstances. Sites like VolunteerMatch connect you with virtual volunteer opportunities where you can meet fascinating people and work on intriguing endeavors anywhere in the world. You can start with a keyword search for “environment” or “sustainability” and hone in from there on just the right fit for your skills and interests.

No matter how busy you are, I hope you can carve out some time to give away freely to benefit your community, make our world a better place, and help yourself stay healthy!

Organizations

References