Describe a volunteering experience you have had
- What it was
- Where it was
- Why you volunteered
- How you felt about it
Volunteers are people who freely enlist for services. Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labour for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve on an as-needed basis, such as in response to a natural disaster.
Here I will talk about a time when I did some social service without anyone’s persuasion. Last year in the month of June, I visited an Old Age Home cum Orphanage called Red Cross Society in Sarabha Nagar in my city as I wanted to see how an Old age home and Orphanage looks like, operates and how people manage to live there. I went there with one of my friends named Muskan as she is also always willing to contribute to noble and humanitarian work. I bought a lot of fruits and also homemade rajma chawal (kidney beans in Indian style gravy with boiled rice) for the elderly and Muskan brought tetra packed fruit juices and packs of chips for the children.
We first went to the old age section at the Red cross society. There were over 40 elderly men and women who had gathered in the living area to meet us. Firstly, we met them all and sat there and talked to them for a while. There I volunteered to sing a song to entertain them and they really liked it. Muskan also narrated some psalms from the Bible and translated them.
Afterwards, we went to their kitchen and prepared a fruit salad out of the fruits that he had bought for them. We all sat and ate the fruit salad and gossiped. They also told us about their past life and how they ended up in an old age home which was quite heartbreaking to hear as many of them belonged to affluent families.
Then we served them Rajmah Chawal and said goodbye to them. Many of them got emotional while we were leaving but we eventually had to. When we went to the orphanage, we were amazed to see that the children there were eagerly waiting for us. They all greeted us and we played some educational games with them. They had just finished their lunch before meeting us so we gave them the goodies after spending ample time with them.
The management of the Red Cross Society appreciated us for visiting them and spending quality time with the seniors as well as the kids. I look forward to visiting them again sometime soon. I felt a sense of deep satisfaction, peace and elation upon doing this activity and got to understand the real essence of humanity that day.
