Employability in Action Module and Social Support

I chose to volunteer at St Vincent de Paul (SVP) founded in Ireland in 1844. It is the largest voluntary charitable organisation in Ireland that gives free and confidential support to those in need, caring for the homeless and social support. The existence of SVP hinges on its ability to help people find the strength to continue improving until they are back to normal. I came across its website and filled an application form to one of its shops. 

After 3 weeks of Garda vetting and verification process, I received a call from Ms Rachel Dalton, Garda Vetting Administrator of SVP to come into their Sean McDermott street shop for briefing and shadow working with one of the staff at the shop. With practical and emotional support, I tried to be a source of strength and comfort by being committed in creating a safe, healthy and inclusive environment for all, particularly, the children, young people and vulnerable adults.

To start with, I thought of volunteering as something, which can help to build a strong relationships and connections with other people, since it is easy to find people from different professional settings in a volunteering course. As an individual interacting with them in an informal way, I might get vital information that can help me in career advancement. Moreover, the relationships might help to create better communities because I get to familiarize myself with real needs of the society. People that volunteer in the community have really influenced me, because many times it is people in my family, friends, or acquaintances. 

These influences have changed me because it reminds me that I should not be so selfish sometimes. I also feel that when I help others out, it brightens up their day, and happy on getting help from somebody else that cares about making a difference their lives. Volunteering is something that everyone should want to do, give a great part of benefits too such as Karma, within the last couple of years, which I truly believe in ‘What goes around comes around’. Therefore, I think that if you are only putting good deeds out there, then eventually someone or something will do good deeds to you too.

When I had to do volunteer services for psychology, I was excited. It was very interesting, because it actually made me feel like a better person for helping someone in the community. While I was volunteering, I learned many things that involved psychology. Psychology obviously relates to humans and putting it into a different perspective, because I have to look at four year olds to younger adults, to see how the theories that we were recently discussing in class apply to them. 

Children learn very quickly at a young age so I had a great opportunity to see that first hand, relating things I learned in class to the actual students I was observing. I thought that 20 hours of volunteering was a perfect amount of time. It gave us enough time to actually get to know that people we were volunteering for, but it was not so that it took forever. I started my volunteering hours as soon as I could, so that I knew I would have plenty of time to complete them apart from assignments, college and work.

As I am a people person, I feel motivated to do activities and different events that have to do with people as it helps me to enjoy doing things. I started as a shop volunteer helping with their events and later went into day care as well as house visitations services, as I particularly like to work with younger adults and children. Helping out with them is necessary, because later on in life I am going to be working with children and adults as I am planning to have a career in Clinical Psychology. When trying to find a job, people look for volunteering experience, because it shows them that you care about helping others, and you take time out of your life to do so. 

Sometimes, an employer may be interested to find out what a potential employee engages in during their free time. Upon finding out that they have volunteered in various programs, there are very high chances of hiring them and compensating them well. Invaluable experiences obtained will be of use and help as a reference point when I further my education into Masters and my career. Through this, I realised the satisfaction one can garner from volunteering. 

In retrospect, it is difficult to think of a more important task that I have done in my life than as a volunteer. Furthermore, I learned that volunteers would be elected and seen as leaders in the community because they are perceived to be kind, reliable, trustworthy, and responsible. The attribution skills that I was required to have prior volunteering slowly developed further through the duration of volunteering.