This article was written by Louise, Head of Operations, as part of 24Slides’ Storyteller’s Program.
I spend a lot of my free time volunteering, and the most common question I get is: “how do you find the time”?
A fair question, as it does indeed mean I have to say no to other things, as there are only so many hours in a day.
My type of volunteering is a big commitment, as it’s year-round and it culminates in Roskilde Festival for one glorious week every summer. Until this year, that meant spending 6-8 vacation days, on top of a lot of evenings and weekends, making it happen every year.
Now my next level awesome job @ 24Slides gives me 3 full days off, with pay, to do good for others. That means we shouldn’t just inspire people to do good, we must also enable them to do it.
A simple form needs to be filled and approved, and you’re off, easy peasy. In my case, that meant only using 4 vacation days this year. For others, who may not feel the need to go as crazy as I do in the volunteering department, they are now given 3 days to dedicate to others, freeing them from that long list of reasons why they couldn’t do it before.
There are as many reasons to volunteer as there are people doing it. For me, it’s (of course) the obvious one: trying to make the world a better place than I found it. But it’s so much more than that!
It allows me to be part of a world where society’s stupid rules don’t necessarily apply. I get to be part of a community of like-minded people from all walks of life that I would never meet otherwise, and together we enable each other to grow beyond what we could ever manage alone.
So, the only question left is, what’s stopping you?
What it looked like 10 years ago:
What it looks like today:
