Volunteering can improve your health

Jun. 24, 2006
ELIZABETH CHEN, The Toronto Star

Volunteering has many benefits. Not only are you helping your community, you also help yourself. There is a belief that volunteering can benefit your mental and physical health as well as your understanding of health issues.

The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, which encourages kindness as a way to affect positive change, believes that stress-related ailments such as obesity, sleeplessness and acid stomach can be alleviated through volunteering. The foundation’s website notes that volunteering increases social contact, which helps decrease feelings of depression, hostility, isolation and stress.

David Hays, the assistant director of the University of Chicago’s Community Service Center (UCSC), believes that volunteering helps improve mental as well as physical health.

“The more balanced life you lead, the more likely you are to have balance. Mental health leads to physical health,” said Hays.

According to Hays, UCSC pairs nearly 2,500 students, faculty and staff volunteers with about 400 community organizations each academic year. The independent organizations vary from Metrosquash, which encourages aerobic activity in inner-city youth, to the Neighborhood Schools Program, which pairs undergraduate and graduate students with local classrooms to bring more individualized attention to students.

Bridget Wild, a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Chicago who volunteers extensively with UCSC, claims that organizations themselves can help volunteers learn about their own health. After volunteering with the National Diabetes Organization, she said you become "very conscious of what you eat so that you’re not 50 and reaping the ‘benefits’ of all the Big Macs you ate.”

Liz Chen attends the University of Chicago. In the four years that she’s been involved with Free The Children, she’s been part of fundraising efforts to support schoolbuilding projects in Haiti and Kenya, and has volunteered in the Masai Mara region of Kenya through Leaders Today. She is a National Merit Scholar and has also been featured in Who's Who Among American High School Students. Read more about this topic at thestar.com/globalvoices.