Volunteering – Great Way to Increase Your Work Experience – Part 2

At the end of July we did a post on Volunteering, but I wanted to expand on that more.  Over the last year I’ve had the pleasure of working very closely with a fantastic organization, and you guessed it, as a volunteer.  It’s been beneficial in so many ways!  Let me hit on a few that I can be more specific with than our last more general post.

I’ve been volunteering with an organization called Achieve Radiance, with the tagline “Change. Connect. Celebrate.”  Our website describes it very well: “where women from all walks of life support each other to be their best, grow, learn and connect; in other words, to achieve radiance, inside and out.”  As a mom-preneur I’m all about empowering women in all walks of life to be their best, so happy to be able to support a fantastic organization!  The benefit is not only do I get to help them, but it has helped me in so many ways, let me explain.

1) Increased Graphic Design Experience. I came on board when their initial graphic designer was taking an extended travelling trip and they needed items produced for different programs and events.  Within the first couple months I’d made 3 logos, a brochure, event program, and a bunch of other graphics needed for their upcoming Gala Event called Glow – which I’m proud to say was a HUGE success!  I gained experience working with other team members offering valuable feedback and the printer I worked with had great feedback helping me to hone my print preparation experience as well (Ever need a great printer Minute Man Press Burnaby is amazingly helpful!).

More recently we’ve also worked on branding our social media as well.  One example is the different design elements for our Facebook Page:

Achieve Radiance Facebook Page

I made the header image using our various logos, ensured the profile image was the right shape, and designed a couple of thumbnails as well.  A great opportunity to hone my Social Media Branding skills!  I’ve done our twitter profile too and other things.

2) Great networking opportunities! Not only do we have our Gala Glow events (which are expanding beyond just Coquitlam, very exciting!) but also starting a monthly meetup called “Glow Gatherings” and a few other programs as well.  And not only do I get to connect with the other teams of ladies working to get those programs and events running, but I get to connect with everyone that comes to the events as an attendee or speaker.  I’m also not just connecting as an attendee but as someone heading up the event.  I’m not sure about you, but I tend to remember the faces and names of people that run events more than all the attendees, so it’s a great way to be memorable.

3) Making great friends. There are times when it’s not always about business, sometimes it’s just great to make good friends.  Through working with the Achieve Radiance team I feel like I’ve gained a whole bunch of new friends.  Our core planning team is fantastic, I love all the ladies in our group.  I guess that happens naturally when you see each other almost once a week, and occasionally even more than that, for pretty much the whole year.  We’ve got to see a baby getting ready to be born, one of our ladies has started up her own Social Media Company (ZiggyBean Media if you ever need help with your Social Media, she’s wonderful), and we’re all helping each other while working towards our end goals for different Achieve Radiance events and programs.

So there you go, another plug for all the volunteer opportunities out there (and a few other great company references thrown in too!).  Grow yourself, help out a great organization and grow your experience!  It’s win-win-win!

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This entry was posted by Anna Kouwenberg on Thursday, October 4th, 2012 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Events, Marketing, Networking, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.