Five Characteristics Of An Effective Volunteer

Five Characteristics of an Effective Volunteer
This Saturday I saw how our class helped people through the Hurricane Relief food drive and how people from the community volunteered some of their Saturday to help. As I watched all of these wonderful things occur I could see five characteristics that stood out to me in every volunteer.
Confidence- trusting firmly; positive; bold Each person that came out on Saturday had a positive attitude that they could make a difference by devoting a little bit of their weekend. They were bold enough to come to the Kwik-Stop to help and to not just read the Hurricane Relief signs and keep driving by. This confidence enabled us to collect food, clothes, household items, and even a fridge! Without confidence everyone would be too scared to interact with one another and our class would never have been bold enough to even put the Hurricane Relief Drive on.
Empathy- capacity for participating in the feelings or ideas of another We must not only be confident enough to take action, we must also know what kind of action to take.
By empathizing with each others needs we were able to put ourselves in the hurricane victim's shoes and feel how overwhelmed and sad they must be and thought of little things that could help. On Saturday people brought the essentials like food and clothes but they also brought stuffed animals, fancy dishes, and sweet smelling shampoo. Little things like that make all the difference from a hand-out to a gift from another friend. When we take into account the little things that other people will notice it strengthens our bonds with each other and lets us see people as just like us with similar feelings when difficult things in life
happens.
Kindness- sympathetic; friendly; gentle; benevolent This puts us in the disposition to do things for others without coming on to strong or like we're doing them a favor. As we help others we really help ourselves to become better people and see the world from other people's points of views. Kindness lets us volunteer by opening the door to people in society. No one wants to help or listen to people who are rude or mean. An example of this is on Saturday; everyone from our class was all smiles when someone drove up and helped them unload their stuff and thanked them for their generosity.
Patience- quality of being able calmly to wait or endure Another characteristic that's essential to volunteering is patience. This was displayed in our project when we set the boxes out at the various dorms around campus and little was collected. We could have easily given up and decided not to come on Saturday but our patience paid off. We patiently came Saturday morning and waited for the generosity of others to come and through that patience we were able to collect lots of stuff for people.
True- authentic, dedicated, devoted, dutiful, faithful, genuine, honest, loyal, real, right, sincere, true-hearted, trustworthy, upright This is the most interesting characteristic of a volunteer because it encompasses so many meanings. What true means to me is that your real and know that the world isn't perfect, but with dedication and genuine loyalty to whatever you do, you can succeed. Being true affects your relationship with others because people can actually tell by looking and talking to you whether you're "for real" or not. Everyone volunteers to help someone besides themselves and when you go out into the community others can see how devoted you are and what a true-hearted person you are.