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Essay about The Benefits of Community Service

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"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
-- Albert Einstein

Volunteering personal time to a cause, service, or other person can be very rewarding for various reasons, and in various ways. These reasons can be specific to the volunteer task, whether the person was recruited for the work or if they found it themselves, life stage of the volunteer, or even the motivation behind donating time. Although research has proved that volunteering affects each individual differently, it has also proved that the affects are typically positive. Within the research done on how volunteerism affects well-being a few major themes emerge: motivations behind volunteering, the affects of volunteerism on the volunteer, and duration and …show more content…

Along these same lines, there is the social capital, which is a persons social network, which provides people with trust and information that can be useful in the perspective volunteers search for work and gives the place of volunteering the benefit of that same knowledge. The social capital theory says that we will do something if other people in our social networks are doing it and that is why those with greater social capital are more likely to volunteer than social isolates. People may begin volunteering because they are in need of a social network, or because their current friends are all volunteering and they want to be recognized as a member within their group.

Marital and employment status also affects motivation and reasoning behind volunteerism. “Married people are more likely to volunteer than single people, although single people without children volunteer the most hours.” (Wilson, 2000) Research proves that if one spouse volunteers, the other is much more likely to volunteer as well. Research has also shown that as the husbands volunteer hours increase, the wives will also increase, but as the wives increase the husbands decrease. The catch within the marital status motivation is that, young married couples may be less likely to volunteer because they must do more paid work to establish themselves. It would stand to reason that if a couple is married and

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