Community service is something many people engage in with the idea that they are doing good for others or fulfilling a civic or spiritual duty. The focus tends to be on how performing community service benefits others, but, as Dr. Candice Matthews points out, it’s a win-win situation. Here’s how volunteering in the place you live helps your community and you.
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Dr. Candice Matthews Reveals How Community Service Helps Others
It’s challenging for many people to take time out of their busy schedules to spend hours volunteering, even when they feel they should. Making space on your calendar is worth it, though. Engaging in service to your community contributes to the greater good.
Boosts Community Cohesiveness
Whenever people get together to perform a task that benefits a greater cause, it creates a bond that can last beyond the activity. When the work is for the community, it can help everyone feel more connected and part of the whole. According to Dr. Candice Matthews, cohesiveness goes a long way to bridging divides that often exist in today’s communities, and it’s something she sees in her own community and those she works in.
Offers Support Where Needed
Whether you give your time to help clean up the neighborhood, create a community garden, build a new home, lead kids on nature excursions, or help with pet adoption events or food drives, your time is a valuable resource. Not only do you help organizations save money that can be leveraged to make other improvements, but your actions also demonstrate that there is value in helping just for the sake of doing good. You serve as a role model within your community, something that Dr. Candice Matthews says has benefits that may last for generations as values pass from one to the next.
How Community Service Benefits You
Giving to others benefits you, perhaps equally or more than it does others. Though volunteers often report how good it makes them feel to help others, many don’t realize that those feelings have positive outcomes that go deeper than the initial satisfaction they get from engaging with their community. Here are two ways volunteering where you live benefits you.
Improves Physical Health and Well-Being
Many people are surprised that research indicates that performing community service improves the health and well-being of the volunteer in the following ways:
- Improves self-confidence
- Increases positivity
- Decreases stress
- Reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety
- Lowers blood pressure
- Decreases chronic pain
- Improve cognitive functioning
People who perform community service also feel less lonely and have a lower mortality rate.
Offers Opportunity To Develop New Skills
Dr. Candice Matthews has seen how much volunteers grow and learn when participating in community service events. It’s a perfect way to discover a new passion and develop new skills. If you have an interest, find a way to explore that interest through engagement with your community. You put yourself in situations that force you to try something new. There are usually plenty of people around who are happy to show you the ropes. It may even be
Learn more about different types of community services and their processes, on this website: www.egmedicine.com