Ask HN: How has volunteering helped you grow?

I am bachelor student now and I have started volunteering with food raising for homeless in my home city, but the thing that learned me the most was student union - i was chair of student union at my department - (i'm not sure if it counts as volunteering - in my country -Poland- student unions do a lot, too much in my opinion). What I have learned: leadership, how to motivate others, how to negotiate with authorities, how long it takes and how many rooms you have to visit to get funding for some event, how to run events, promotion, even some graphics (or rather - where to find cheap tools to create fancy leaflets or posters ). Before I was quite shy and of course at some point I still am , but I have really exceeded my interpersonal and time management skills, I got some experience in law issues- stipends, for example ( at my uni it was student union who was responsible for that ).

Though it's not as rewarding as helping homeless or children, and in my opinion we were doing the donkey work , I am glad I have spent this time there, because it have me experience , contacts and sometimes satisfaction of organising something that other student enjoyed.

Also, I was volunteering at international classical music festival in my city - it was really great - you get tickets for free for almost every concert, the atmosphere is amazing and it's also experience for interpersonal skills. Once I was a pilot for small orchestra and I had amazing time going there and back by bus talking with musicians about their experience and basically everything, we even had a little party on the way back. In the bus ;) these types of events lets you get into fancy banquets, meet some famous people (i talked to really great director ) and also - contacts.

Now I am volunteering in hospital to get some experience as patient assistant - we help patients find themselves in our big and messy hospital.

To sum up - it is really rewarding, but it costs time. A lot of it. I think you might learn most of these things somewhere else, where you are paid, but also you have more responsibilities and it is harder in the beginning. And of course - poeple you volunteer with are usually really interesting and become good friends !

I have two volunteer gigs that I work.

In one, I'm a member of the board of directors for my condo association. There is a certain amount of growth involved, but ultimately there are a lot of politics and personalities that affect how the board works. We've accomplished a lot, but you can really see who's in control and who's just there because they thought it would be cool or something.

In the other, I volunteer as a stagehand (jack of all trades, master of none) for a community theater. I've learned a ton about the world of theater and have a new appreciation for the effort involved in putting on a production. There is a huge culture of making do with what you have, and the things that we've accomplished are incredible. Everyone involved is willing to teach the volunteers new skills, provided that they're willing to learn. This is definitely the one that's given me the most growth.

I think people tend not to think of editing Wikipedia as a long term time investment. YouTube videos don't feel like volunteering to me because more often than not it's a job. And open source development probably just wouldn't occur to most people because most people aren't developers.

My main volunteer effort is Walkstarter ( https://www.walkstarter.org ) a free platform to help public schools raise money more efficiently through walkathon fundraisers. I built, support, fund and maintain the platform and my goal is to have it in use by every U.S. public school.

The platform is on track to hit $1 million in funds raised in the next 30-45 days. It's very gratifying to work on code and features that result in a tangible benefit -- increased funding for education. It has taught me a great deal about the vast disparities in education funding between affluent school districts in the Bay Area versus struggling school districts in other parts of the country. It is sad that we spend so much more on weapons than education.

Soon, I will launch GoalStarter, a variant of Walkstarter for schools that have all kinds of other -athons for fundraising such as Spellathon, Musicathon etc. I am also working on integrating RFID tags so when kids walk laps, the arduous task of recording laps walked per kid can be automated.

That's great! I find cycling & its place in society to be a really interesting subject, & one which I take part in (cycling is my main mode of transport), encourage & engage (member of Leeds cycling campaign) with in a fair few ways.

As a software dev, I'm particularly interested in the ways in which you found to apply your techical skills to the subject. What other ways do you you see of using those to further improve matters?