Learn How to Write an Impressive Essay About Volunteering

If you are applying to a college and need to write an essay about volunteering, then our guide will be particularly useful for you. Since such an essay is an important part of the admission process, it is necessary to write at the best level. In our article, you will find a lot of helpful suggestions on how to make your community service essay truly outstanding. Be attentive and you will definitely figure out how to impress the admission officers.

What Is a Community Service Essay?

In a nutshell, is a paper that aims to describe the volunteering experience of the applicant. In such an essay, you need to explain what you have done to improve the life of your community. Of course, the community service may have different types. However, no matter what kind of volunteering experience you have had, your essay should clearly state how you have benefited the community you live in.

The student needs to write an essay about volunteering experience because of two reasons:

To apply to college. Some colleges want to know that the students applying to them were engaged in the volunteering experience.
To apply for a scholarship. Some scholarships can be awarded onto to students with significant community service achievements. Proving that they have sufficient volunteering experience, students can get necessary funds for tuition, room, board, etc.

How to Get Started?

In the following sections, we are going to provide you with all the significant steps of writing an essay about volunteering.

Study the essay requirements. Before you start writing your essay, you need to understand what is required. Each college and university has its own guidelines and requirements for writing a community service essay. As such, if you want to succeed with your paper, you need to study your guidelines carefully and make sure you can follow them. Below, you will find the specific points you should consider when working on your essay:

Required length;
Deadline for essay submission;
The goal of an essay;
The required structure (if it is mentioned in your prompt).

If you have no idea what essay prompts you may be asked to cover, have a look at the most popular ones:

What community service you`ve participated in has influenced you most of all?
Tell about your motivation for volunteering;
What are the outcomes of your volunteering experience?
How do you feel when helping others? Does this service influence your self-identity?
Has the community service changed your values and beliefs? In what way?

Of course, you may be provided with a different prompt. However, most of them are focused on your motivation, achievements, and outcomes of volunteering. In case you lack understanding on how a community service essay should look like, you may check some examples available on the web. In particular, you will see that the best essays about volunteering experience are always well-written and properly structured. Besides, they are maximally detailed, engaging, and appealing.

Write Your Essay

The success of your essay depends not only on its content but also its structure. The way you develop your ideas is particularly important. Jumping from one idea to another, you will never make your essay coherent. As such, it is highly recommended to follow the classic structure, which assumes writing an introduction, main body, and a conclusion.

Begin Your Essay with a Good Introduction

The primary goal of your introductory paragraph is to engage your reader and make them follow your ideas. For this purpose, you need to include a hook that will help you grab the attention of your target audience and make them get interested in your story. Pay attention that the admission committee members read hundreds of essays about volunteering on a daily basis and it is impossible to impress them with a standard essay. What is more, they know what is written in all the community service essay examples available on the web. As such, if you want to receive good feedback, you need to write your paper from scratch telling about your personal motivation and achievements.

Show Your Personality

You should know that the admission committee members will evaluate your essay not for what you have done but for how you can tell about it. Ideally, you need to inform them how this experience has influenced you, your values, and your ideas. In such an essay, it is appropriate to use the “I” statements to show your personality. However, try not to overburden the text of your essay with personal pronouns.

Include Thoughtful Statements

A good writer knows that a well-written essay should show, not tell. You need to draw a picture of your volunteering experience in the heads of your readers with the help of vivid details and imagery. When telling about your ideas and values, do not forget to illustrate them with good examples.

Demonstrate Your Maturity

If your essay, you need to convince your target audience that your volunteering experience has helped you grow mentally. Try to dig deeper and find out how your community service has contributed to your personal identity. After all, community service is always about making difference. As such, you need to convince your reader and you have become different too.

Finalize Your Essay Well

Your conclusion is the most important part of your essay in which you should not only wrap up everything that was told in the previous parts but also clearly state why you want to be accepted. Do not forget that admission committee members may not have enough time to read the entire essay, so they pay closer attention to a conclusion. As such, in your conclusion, you should briefly state your volunteering experience and convince your reader that you are better than other applicants.

All in all, writing an essay about volunteering experience is not that difficult if you know how to do it. We assure you that the students, who checked our guide have already reached their goals. So, if you are willing to present your community service experience from the best perspective, feel free to follow out handy practices.

Volunteering Essay Example to Read for Free

The term volunteering is sometimes thought to be synonymous with such works such as philanthropy and self-sacrifice therefore it implies that it requires a lot of dedication and more importantly it should be a conception of the heart. Although many perceive volunteering as an activity unique to people like the late mother Theresa of Calcutta, volunteering offers a perfect opportunity for responsible individuals in the society to give back to a society that has provided so much for them. It is an opportunity that should not be viewed as a punishment or as an easy way to make the resume more pleasing to employers but as a way of serving the general community. With this background it is however important to actually define or expound on the actual meaning and implications of volunteering.

Volunteering is performing an activity in a community or an institution without the expectations of being compensated in terms of wages or any other material gain. Although different people do volunteer work for many reasons the general perception is that volunteering should involve offering services to the needy without expecting any gain. However some people still offer their services without expecting any monetary gains but rather expect to gain through the acquired experience and exposure. Perhaps the best example is in the current job market that is marred by stiff competition that most people prefer to volunteer in companies before their land a job or they are summoned for interviews. However a question arises as to whether volunteering with the motive of gaining exposure and experience is volunteering after all. Volunteering should be services rendered to the needy members of the society. For instance a person can choose to volunteer in a children’s home or a church or during a national disaster. During hurricanes where people lose their homes people volunteer by offering to distribute foodstuffs to the needy or offering counseling services for free. Volunteering is a chance for the community to come together for a common course and this is especially important in a century where people have become too busy and too cautious even to know the next door neighbor. Individuals in a community might volunteer to clean up their environment. Apart from the fact that the environment will be clean the people will also have the chance of bonding with each other and making new friends and acquaintances. Many large companies organize volunteering sessions for their employees as part of their corporate responsibility portfolio and it also gives the employees a chance for team building.

The 21st century has seen the erosion of communities in the name of being busy. Perhaps volunteering is one of the ways to bring back the communal aspect to humanity. Offering services with the aim of helping lift some load off the shoulders of needy members of the society is very rewarding. Furthermore people should always be ready to respond when called upon in times of crisis to help especially during disasters when the government alone cannot handle.

Volunteering may lead to exposure and gain of experience but the gains should not be the prime motivation. For instance when a person offers their services to a company that does not need them in the first place just to gain exposure should not be considered as volunteering. Volunteering should be done to the needy and it should be able to add value to the needy.