Volunteering to Make a Difference
Making a difference in your community is an important goal, one that provides opportunities to make special contributions to people who truly need help. Organizational leaders who offer and support volunteer opportunities for their workforces reap untold benefits.
- There is a direct impact on organizational pride. Team members coming together to accomplish a worthy goal creates a sense of organizational unity and accomplishment.
- Team members have the opportunity to interact cross-functionally with people outside of the traditional work environment to build stronger relationships.
- Volunteering positively impacts someone else’s life. This is the most valuable result of any volunteering effort.
Recently, team members from Five Star Cares, Five Star’s organizational volunteer effort, prepared a spaghetti dinner with all the fixings for our friends at the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, our adopted community organization for 2008-2009. Knives were chopping, brownies were flying, and music was playing, but still the best part of the night was the conversation that was had with the ladies at the shelter and their children. Doug DiFilippo, Five Star coordinator for the event, noted that his favorite moments of the evening came while talking with the ladies about the simplest things, “how we made the spaghetti sauce,” for example. He also recalled that the “amount of thank-yous and goodwill was eye-opening,” noting that every single effort, even small ones, have huge impacts.
To receive information on how to create a volunteer program in your organization, please visit these two sites:
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