How volunteering helped me develop new skills!!

I met a friend from College who is an excellent soft skills trainer during Give Back NGO Expo. She is extremely talented and I was trying to convince her to be GYAN trainer, while she was convinced to give the training she kept on repeating that she has immense stage fear and fear of public speaking.

She questioned me then about how I overcame my fear of public speaking and my immediate response was ‘Volunteering helped me overcome it’. I was a happy go silent person who used to keep to herself in most of the situations- From that silent person to a highly noisy and energetic person is what defines my volunteering journey and my days at iVolunteer.

The very first day of volunteering with children made me self aware of my inability of people management, my second volunteering experience with children made me aware of importance of controlling a situation. Subsequent days with children and beneficiary taught me ways to keep them occupied to lessen the noise levels and to delegate responsibilities well. Non profit work culture and staff interaction helped me in widening my problem solving, networking and critical thinking attitude. Various cross functional skills got enhanced due to working in limited resources and time.

Volunteering with senior citizens taught me to be respectful and to not take things for granted. Volunteering with self help group made me a more confident person and somebody who could raise voice for a cause. Orientations to other volunteers has led me to become a more involved person to the surrounding and definitely made me learn how to address people in huge gathering. While I was learning all of the above, I somewhere lost my inhibitions of stage fear and of speaking in huge crowd.

My role has evolved from being a volunteer to a volunteer manager and everything that makes me a successful manager is been learnt through Volunteering. After listening to my experience my friend is convinced to be a GYAN trainer and I hope more and more people will be convinced by her to volunteer!