With the New Year we are often drawn to make resolutions to improve our lives in areas from health, finances, and relationships to self worth.  One resolution to consider this year, especially as a nurse, is volunteering.  Volunteering not only gives back to the global community, but also can provide a great sense of satisfaction and self-worth.  With some organizations, you may even be able to travel the world as you volunteer.  Unlike a regular job, with volunteering, you decide how much time to give.

Once you resolve to add volunteering to you activities for the year, the question then becomes, “How do I find volunteer opportunities?”  There are a number of websites that offer services to match skills and interests with volunteer opportunities.  These sites ask you to indicate your interests, your skills and the general area where you live or where you’d like to volunteer.  They then provide you with lists of programs from which to choose.

The quickest and most direct way to find opportunities in your hometown is to use your computer search engine and the key words, “volunteer opportunities and the name of your home town” or “volunteer opportunities for nurses.”  Be sure to screen any organization carefully before making a commitment or starting to volunteer.

Another option is VolunteerMatch.org (www.volunteermatch.org), a nationwide clearinghouse where non-profits list volunteer opportunities.  There are over 96,331 agencies nationwide, registered with Volunteer Match.org, from working with housing and the homeless, education and literacy, animal rescue, the environment, youth and children, arts and culture, and health and medicine.  Over 7,480,871 volunteers have been matched since 1998.  The process is relatively simple and allows you to choose opportunities within or outside your profession.

In the nursing field, One Nurse At A Time (www.onenurseatatime.org) offers a directory of nursing volunteer opportunities locally, nationally and internationally.  Another organization that relies heavily on volunteer nurses is the American Red Cross.  More than 15,000 nurses are involved in volunteer activities from local disaster teams, to health fairs, first aid stations at local events (marathons, fairs, concerts) to education of the Red Cross certification classes in CPR, Babysitting, Family Care Giving, Nurse Assistant Training and much more.

In addition, the Hands On Network (www.handsonnetwork.org) is a national organization that is designed to inspire, equip and mobilize people to take action that changes the world. They put people at the center of change with over 2.6 million volunteers and 236,000 volunteer opportunities.

Volunteering is one resolution that provides rewards not only for others, but for volunteers as well.