Welcome to the Hitting the Open Road Video Series. This video is presented by
the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth's National Youth
Action Council on Transition. YouthACT is a national initiative to get more
youth with disabilities and their allies involved as leaders who partner with
adults and organizations to improve opportunities for youth to succeed in
life.
NCWD/Youth worked with YouthACT teams consisting of youth and adults to
produce multiple publications including Hitting the Open Road after High School:
How to Choose Your Own Adventure to Success. A picture of the cover in the
brief is displayed here and the link to the brief is in the description box
below. For each video in the Hitting the Open Road Video Series, youth leaders
from YouthACT share information and tips from the brief as well as their
personal stories around transition.
Hi, my name is Sasha Fursman and I am a member of the YouthACT team in Minnesota.
Today I will be talking about Volunteering into the Workforce. There's
various forms of employment options including jobs, internships, volunteering,
and military service. However, today, I'll be talking about my journey with
volunteering into the employment sector. To the left, there's a brief called
Hitting the Open Road after High School that was produced by various YouthACT
groups. If you'd like to learn more information about those 4 employment
options, please look at the link in the description box below and
the pages are 10 and 11 to find that information in the brief. My
story, I began volunteering when I was 14 years old and I found the
organization of Minnesota Association for Children's Mental Health
on accident. I just passed by it and ever since then I've been volunteering
there for two years. When I was 14 I started volunteering and
when I was 16, I actually started to advocate for a short term paid position
when they needed additional support. The reason I was able to do that was
because I had joined a program called PSEO,
Post-Secondary Enrollment Options, that allowed me to go to college
while I was in high school so I had the extra time and the flexibility to be
able to volunteer more often and then later work about 10 hours a week while I
was in school. Eventually my short term position turned into a
long term position. Now I am 19 years old and I have been working here for 3
years almost. I, eventually, became a full-time paid staff when I started
college at 18 years old.
Why volunteer? Why not? That's what I like to say when people ask me. There's
nothing to lose. It's a very low risk investment that you can make for
yourself. I think it's free job training basically. I got to learn so many skills
about Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe, and various different forms of
administrative skills that I otherwise wouldn't have learned had I not
volunteered here. Employers and schools appreciate it on a resume. Not just 1
time volunteering, so long term volunteering was looked at in very great
light when you're applying for jobs or applying for schools. I remember when I
was applying for colleges a lot of them asked, "What long-term volunteering have
you done?" Not just no a 1-day thing but what have you been able to do where you
could volunteer and provide for your community for extended period of time
and commit yourself to your community for an extended period of time. It's the
best time, in my opinion, to make mistakes and learn from them. You're not getting
paid so you don't really have to worry as much about getting fired or anything
like that. You still can lose a volunteer position sometimes if the
organization doesn't need volunteers anymore but
you're still not taking the risk you would if you had a job and were
getting fired. It's a great time to learn from your mistakes.
Also giving back to your community is never
unappreciated so it's never going to be looked at in a bad light that you
volunteered. It's a great way to support your community, do something for
someone other than yourself, free job training, schools and employers love it.
You can make mistakes; learn from them and there's nothing really to lose, low
risk investment. How Volunteering can Lead to Work. Everything is only as
possible as you make it. If it's your priority or your goal to volunteer and
have that lead to an appointment position like I
did, you can make it happen or you can make steps to make it happen. If you
integrate yourself into that organization and make great connections with
the people you're working with. If you ask, "How can I be a better volunteer?" that
shows your commitment to caring about the success of the organization and what
it provides to the community. Don't ever be afraid to ask, "What can I do to
be a better volunteer?" That'll help you if you're looking to get an
employment position in that organization. For me, how I did it was a my second
point here. I advocated for myself to move up in an organization
that I was volunteering in to see if they needed any kind of support. I
did that through a basic database job that they needed.
I was fine with it, I'm sixteen years old so I did it. It
was supposed to be short-term and it ended up being long-term as you know. So
that's one way you can do it. You can advocate for yourself in an organization
you're currently volunteering in or if you're not interested in working where
you're volunteering, you can definitely make connections at that organization
and make learn about their network of other organizations that they know about
So they can help you get in touch with places you might want to work at
instead. Also, they can become your best references. Your volunteer coordinators
or managers can be great references to put on your resume. Most
the time when you do apply for a job, they'll call your references and when
they do so, they're looking for people to talk on your behalf that have managed
you before. So volunteer managers are great. It's a great way to start if
you've never had a job before either to start to build your resume.
How Volunteering can Lead to Work. Advocate for yourself where you're
already volunteering. If you're interested in a position then don't be
afraid to ask, "How can I be a better volunteer?" If that's the path you're
trying to go down and get an employment opportunity at that
organization because it makes you look very committed
to their goals, mission, and success. Again, if you don't
want to do that, you can still make great reference or still meet people that
would be great references and also building that network that you otherwise
couldn't have. Balancing Act. A lot of us that are transitioning or in
transition age we're in school, we have jobs, so how do we add volunteering to that and how does
that volunteering make an impact if we don't have much time for it?
How can I volunteer if I go to school full-time? Does volunteering an hour a week
even make a difference and my answer to that is yes. Working in an
organization that utilizes volunteers, I can see that when a volunteer takes an
hour out of their time to do a task that we'd have had to do that saves
us time where we can do other things. Also if the organization is small and
short-staffed that extra hour of support definitely assist them in helping reach
their goals where they can better support the community. How can I volunteer if
I go to school full-time or work full-time? Don't over
commit yourself, you know. If you know that you can't volunteer five hours a
week, don't say you can. Analyze how
much time you really have and then develop a plan with that organization
around your time. Around what you're comfortable
doing and then it'll feel a lot better for you. You don't feel like you're
not going to volunteer or something. If you can't make more than an hour a
week or if you only make two hours a week, just let them know that. Just
don't over commit to something if it's going to add stress to your life or
anything like that. How do I start how do I start volunteering? Do what you're
interested in. A lot of people know or if you don't
know what you're interested in, do something you have no knowledge about.
I had no knowledge about mental health. Now, I do because of where I
volunteered. You can also take interest assessments to figure out what volunteer
and career options might best fit. That's a great way if you're struggling
to find an organization to reach out to about volunteering. You can take these
kinds of assessments to help guide you in a path towards what you're interested
in. You can search organizations directly online and reach out to them as
well as directly. If you know you want to do something in mental health, you can
find a non-profit online and then find a person that works there and get their
phone number and email and directly reach out to them because that
can oftentimes be a lot more valuable than simply using a search engine
online or a contact form online. If you directly reach out to someone in that
organization that you're interested in volunteering for, you're probably going
to have a higher response rate. Also, organizations rarely turn down free work
or free workers so don't be afraid of reaching out and getting no responses.
Also, organizations don't have the capacity to have an infinite amount of volunteers so if you
do get responses where they don't need you, that shouldn't
necessarily be discouraging. They might not have the ability to give
volunteers enough work so you can reach out to 5 or 10 different
volunteer organizations or different organizations that are looking for
volunteers and then you're going to be more likely to get a response for some
sort of work you could do. Make your talents or skills known so if you're
bilingual, if you're good with AV texts, computers, if you're a good writer, all
those kinds of skills are great for volunteering. They're always looking for
people to hire that have higher level skills that can
assist them with higher-level volunteer work. You might be able to get a
volunteer position more easily if you have skills like being bilingual or
being good with any sort of computer software, or whatever else your skill might
be. How do I start? Do something you're interested in or if
you don't know what you're interested in, do something you have no knowledge about.
Search organizations online and directly reach out to them. Don't be afraid of
reaching out and make your skills known.
Conclusion. There's never any harm that comes from volunteering. You're never
be doing a disservice to yourself. It's a great way to build
skills. It's essentially free job training. You can do your own self
development at your own pace at your own schedule. You can say, "I have two hours a
week. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to learn and this is when I
can do it." That flexibility is extremely valuable and when you get to
volunteer as opposed to having a job where you can't just say, "This is when I
can work and this is what I want to do." You
have the ability to really get into a position where you can create a plan for
your own development or your own learning if that's what you want to do.
Otherwise, there's other volunteering where you just help out at events or do
stuff like that and that's needed as well. You can volunteer in the field that
you care about. Gain experience to relevant to your interests and build
critical networks, and building critical network is probably going to be my biggest
focal point here. As soon as you have a network that is
surrounded by the people that are a part of organizations that you're interested
in. So if you're in
in the mental health field, volunteer at a mental health organization and
you can integrate yourself into that network so if you want to get a job
at place "X" you can do that from volunteering at place "Y" because they
have the ability to connect you to each other. Take it from me, I'm 19. I'm a
senior in college graduating with my BA this year in Business and I work full
time as a project coordinator all because I started volunteering. So
there's really not much that could go wrong and nobody's going to be
perfect or nobody's going to be like me here like anyone else because we're all
ourselves. That's what you can do is an hour a week that's no harm. It's a great
way to get yourself out there into the community. Today, I talked
about volunteering however if you want to learn more about other
employment options like a traditional job, an internship, or military service,
you can read this brief produced by other YouthACT teams and the link for
that is in the description box below. Thank you!
YouthACT is an initiative of the National Collaborative on Workforce and
Disability for Youth led by the Institute for Educational Leadership.
This video was produced under a cooperative agreement funded by the U.S.
Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy. The
opinions contained in this video are those of the grantee contractor and do
not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Labor. For more information
about NCWD/Youth, visit www.ncwd-youth.info. The Institute for
Educational Leadership logo is that bottom left and the National
Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth logo is at bottom
right.
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