Have you ever done voluntary work? - He does it for free, for true recompense is in Heaven

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Have you ever done voluntary work?

  • Yes, I liked it

    Votes: 31 60.8%

  • Yes, I didn't like it

    Votes: 11 21.6%

  • No

    Votes: 9 17.6%
  • Total voters
    51
I regularly do that.
I'm an artist (yes, I'm an autist too) and I perform at various charities every now and then.
Even though it's for free, you can get noticed by people with money and connections (there's always 1 or 2 at every charity event) and later, they'll hire you for some corporate event.

However, even if there's no payment or opportunities, it's nice to do something for others just because.
It makes me feel like I'm not a total scumbag.
 
A lot. When I was younger it was charities, but as I got older and saw what they were really like, I went with smaller operations. So local pet shelters, did some church food drives, et cetera.

But now I've stopped with those even. Too much to do work wise. But I still help out at community events, since I love my little town and am known a bit. They keep on wanting me to take a leadership position but I always like doing grunt work really, can't be assed to put that much effort in unless I am getting paid. Which I won't accept since it defeats the purpose in the first place.
 
I don't think it counts if I did it because someone told me to, so no.

Because I'm lazy and selfish. I shouldn't be surprised how many people are responding so defensively. "I'm not self-absorbed! Ch-charity is always a scam! Helping only makes things worse! Everyone who needs help is just a leech; I'm John Galt!"

Those of you who are good people and try to do something to help people or cute fuzzy animals, keep it up. I'm glad someone cares, even if I refuse to budge without pay.
 
I like to donate blood and donate my hair. I will grow my hair out super long because it grows very fast. Then I'll have it tied into a pony tail and cut off. Then it's just sending it to a charity who turns it into wigs for children who lost their hair to cancer. It's super easy to do, check them out if you are looking to chop off a bunch of hair. https://www.wigsforkids.org/

I can't donate blood often but it's why I haven't been able to get more tattoos. You can't donate if you get inked from 6months to a year but I kinda see donating blood more important right now than getting some sick as hell inks.

I'm an artist so I used to create sets and paint them for a local church who put on plays a lot. They provided the paints and gave me food so it was all good for me.
 
oldTireWater said:
Volunteer dog walking. It's kind of a drag.
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That's cool, I heard of people that helped in dog shelters but I didn't know this type of work also existed. I imagine that if you do it every so often it can be quite fun, but doing it frequently indeed sounds like a huge drag.
NigKid said:
did something similar, had to stop after a while cause it just dragged me down.
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In an organization I regularly volunteer to there's a guy that volunteers at a crisis line as well and has been doing it for a few years, he also said it's very, very stressful. I honestly can't imagine what it must be like, I honestly wouldn't be able to take such responsibility.
Consider Lizards said:
Work with the homeless. Mostly hard, sometimes fun, always interesting. And a chunk of death, drugs mostly. Suicide and cold, too.
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I also volunteered with my family at an organization that helped the homeless in my city, we directly delivered food that other volunteers made to them at night every Saturday, but I ended up not liking it, partly because of how much drugs and alcohol are involved. There were a few that tried to get on their feet, but most were unfortunately too far gone and I was a little afraid to be around them, specially when we were in the shady parts of town and the person we were helping seemed to be acting in a very strange manner. It's a shame, but I learned a lot about the homeless in the process. Here's the site if you're curious, though the branch this site is dedicated to isn't the one I worked for.
 
I used to do some volunteer work with a local homeless charity, until I fell out with them about the way some things were being handled. I still do an occasional shift once or twice a month (and a couple of hours on Christmas Day/New Year's Day) at the soup kitchen near me, though.
 
I've donated plenty of blood over the years, I'm kinda less inclined to do it now because they're required to ask what "gender identity I identify with". Like blood donation is a for-profit industry and if they're forcing their employees to do that shit I'm really less happy to help them.
 
I used to organize astronomy nights at the local orphanage: take my telescope, set it up and spend the evening/early night watching the skies with the kids and my friends with similar interests. Meteor shower viewing was a hit, and it always blew younger ones minds when I "predicted" ISS and satellite flares (by checking on heavens-above). Also bought a few KSP copies to install on the PCs in the orphanage.

Don't do that so much anymore cause of Covid and lack of time on my part but it was real nice to see the children in awe when seeing Saturn's rings for the first time. There were some brats but for the most part they were a great bunch.
 
I volunteer all the time for my labor union. Go to meetings, help run functions, plan things, move chairs, etc. Nothing that's really like professional labor or whatever. It's fun. Basically it's hanging out with my friends but also doing something (somewhat) productive.
 
I used to be part of the Big Brother program helping underprivileged kids and teens who might not otherwise have a good role model in their lives to find purpose and good constructive hobbies. Now I spend my free time helping autistic adults and teens in my community learn to fend for themselves and do things like pay taxes, communicate with others, and generally find stability and purpose in their lives. I’m basically a life coach who works for free and doesn’t even have my own shit figured out.
 
Yes. Volunteer work can be a grueling and thankless job, especially when you're trying to help people who don't appreciate it, or even worse, feel entitled to your time and effort. I didn't do any of it for those people though. I always looked at it as the price that had to be paid for those rare moments when you actually changed the life of someone who desperately needed it. You endure the crazy, ungrateful and abusive dickheads just to get to that one person who really needed you to be there in that exact moment.

Ultimately though, the people who control these organized efforts can be (and in my experience usually are) soulless bureaucrats who don't really give a shit about the stated mission. They're just trying to get a line item on their resume. You can only fight a war on two fronts for so long when you're not even getting compensated for your time. Nowadays I stick to helping people individually when life and luck happen to arrange for our paths to cross. It's less impactful, but it's more rewarding.
 
Yeah and stopped. I use to be extremely nice to people and help out when I could. I did charity work (giving out free food, helping to clean public areas, helping with the community theater and tutoring people at our local college and a lot more) however, until I realize how greedy people were and that they took food that they didn’t need, trash the area you just clean with their piss bottles, then you stop caring. the one thing that I realized is that both people from any political, religious, race or gender will take advantage of others and destroy everything they touch. I don’t want to sound gloomy but people made me stop caring for others.
 
Hell no. We live in a capitalist society, baby. You want me to play, you gotta pay.
 
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