Group Volunteering, a Wonderful Experience
I have always wanted to volunteer, but I was always intimidated by getting into a volunteer project alone. I guess I have some problems with social anxiety, panic and taking a long time to be comfortable with new people if I don’t have a couple of old buddies nearby. I have a good group of friends, and one day we began talking about community service. Apparently, I was not the only one who had always wanted to do a few volunteer work but had never gotten around to it. We decided to try group volunteering together.
The five of us found a volunteer project doing some river cleanup. We live on a very long and very polluted river, and a local group was organizing a trash pickup day. They had turned it into several small-group volunteering projects. Essentially, every group of people was responsible for a particular beach or a specific stretch of shore. The five of us got a specially scenic spot that was not too far from my home.
When we got to the beach, I was pretty surprised and nearly shocked by how messy it had gotten. Other was broken bottles on the walkway, cigarette butts on the ground, and even a discarded tire sitting down right by the water. In addition, there was a bunch of trash and driftwood that had washed up in the last storm still strewn along the shoreline. I had not been down there in a while, but it was a place I had been going to since I was a kid. It used to be almost pristine when I was younger, so I was grateful to have this group volunteering opportunity to clean it up and help restore it to how I remembered it.
Our group volunteering day was highly successful.
We chatted and caught up as we walked along the beach, picking up trash. When we were done, we got to meet up with the other volunteer groups, dispose of the garbage together and do a sort of “debriefing” At a local pub. We talked about this project and other things the river care taking group was involved with. Apparently, there was a whole community of volunteer groups, which did a variety of community service activities together. I actually felt very comfortable with these people, and made a few friends before the evening was over. I’m seriously considering doing another community service project with the group soon: I will be helping to clear out invasive species this time.
