Building a Better Future: The Importance of Volunteering as Teenagers and Young Adults

The teenage and young adult years are often full of challenges as children move toward adulthood and make increasingly important decisions about their futures. During this time, teens are finding their niche in their communities, forming relationships, and developing skills that they will carry with them as adults. Volunteering with Global Volunteers during this formative time can provide innumerable benefits and life-changing opportunities for teenagers and young adults in your life.

Learning transferable skills – Volunteering provides an opportunity to learn valuable transferable skills that can be applied in college and adulthood. While volunteering, you work with different types of people from different backgrounds and develop conflict resolution, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. Volunteers learn to function in different cultures, and even gain practical skills like teaching experience, how to do basic repairs and maintenance, and even learn new languages, all skills that can benefit teenagers and young adults.

Fulfill community service requirements – Many teenagers and young adults are required to complete community service hours to graduate from middle or high school. A Global Volunteers service program is an opportunity to complete all or most of their service hour requirements at one time.

Teaches empathy – When volunteering in different communities around the world with Global Volunteers, you connect with people and communities whose situations and problems are very different from your own, from mothers in rural Tanzania to Ukrainian school children to asylum seekers in McAllen, TX. By working with local people and building relationships with them, teenagers and young adults are taught empathy, and can better understand and share the feelings of others. Colleen Shannon felt that after volunteering her children “…developed a broader and deeper worldview. They recognized they have gifts to share and discovered a desire to learn from and serve others.”

Helps build their resume – College, job, and scholarship applications are all increasingly competitive. Volunteering during their teenage and young adult years can give teens valuable experiences and skills that they can list on their resumes and help them stand out from the crowd. Volunteering can also help teens and young adults discover their passions and interests and help them focus their attention on colleges and jobs that are the best fit for them. Volunteer Judy Takata described her granddaughter’s experience volunteering with Global Volunteers in Montana saying, “I brought my granddaughter Martina, who was a sophomore in high school, with me on a Global Volunteers trip…. Later, when she worked on her applications to colleges, she highlighted her volunteer work. One of the schools contacted her before she received her official acceptance letter to tell her that they were so impressed with her volunteer work.”

Build deeper connections with family – Volunteering as a family with teenagers or young adults gives you a chance to work together towards common goals, experience new things, and build deeper bonds while disconnected from phones, computers, and the stressors of school/work.

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