50+ Virtual Community Service Ideas That Will Make You Stand Out from the Crowd
Tackling the imposter syndrome? Want to stand out from the crowd? Or are you someone interested in giving back to the community?
Read on to find out how you can participate in virtual community service projects to fulfill your needs and desires.
What is Community Service?
Community service is a form of volunteering intended to help people or serve the wider society. It is often aimed at improving the lives of others, especially disadvantaged communities. Your community service can help various groups: children, women, transgenders, the elderly and even animals.
Many people participate in community service because they enjoy helping others and want their community to reap the benefits of their work.
Many others engage in community service because they want to gain some experience that they can talk about in their college applications to demonstrate their skills.
Why Should You Engage in Community Service?
There are various reasons why one should participate in community service and volunteering. However, here’s a few to name:
- You want to make the most of this lockdown.
- You want to be productive and keep busy during this pandemic.
- You want to develop your leadership skills.
- You want to quench your thirst for volunteering.
- You want to give back to the community.
- You want to improve the society you live in.
- You enjoy helping those in need.
- You want to gain and develop new skills and develop your awareness.
- You want to build your CV or strengthen your resume.
- You want to gain an insight into volunteering.
- You want to gain work experience.
- You want to work with people from diverse backgrounds.
- You want to meet new people and make new friends.
How should you use this list?
In order to enable you to succeed in providing community service, we have compiled a list of activities that you can do. To use this list effectively, we encourage you to brainstorm and think carefully about the following questions. The answers to these will help you decide what kind of community service you want to engage in.
Who would you like to help?
Are you looking to help a specific group of people or cause? Are you passionate about a specific community that you want to help? It is important to know whether the group of people you want to help, need your help to create a positive social impact. For example, setting up a foodbank in a society where food supply is sufficient, might not be effective. Instead, setting up hygiene facilities would be more important. Hence, it needs to be taken into consideration, what a specific community needs and you must tailor your service to their needs.
How long would you want to participate in?
How much of your time can you give to performing community service? Do you have a lot of spare time? Do you have spare time only once a week? You need to find a community service program that fits your timeframe. If you are quite busy, you might want to find something that does not happen regularly, but only sporadically. At TriberforGOOD, we offer different programmes of varying length. You can pick from one of these, that suit your timeframe. We have both short-term and long-term programs.
What is your intended impact?
What kind of an impact do you intend to create upon completion of your community service project? For instance, some people prefer to participate in community service activities, that have a tangible and significant impact, such as raising a specific amount of money for a charity or building a specific number of toilets for disadvantaged communities. On the other hand, some activities do not have such clear numbers, such as serving as a lifeguard, or starting a social media campaign.
People might prefer quantifiable activities because they are easier to talk about in college applications. Some prefer the latter simply because they are more keen on enjoying the process of serving the community and are not very focused on the outcome. Depending on your requirements, you might prefer one over another.
What skills would you like to gain?
Upon completion of your community service project, what skills would you want to be equipped with? Take into consideration the following skills that you can develop by doing community service:
- Communication: When you step into the world of community service, you will work directly with communities that often rely on oral communication as they are usually less accustomed to technology. As communication is the root of engagement, your communication skills will be strengthened as you converse with different stakeholders – leadership teams, operations teams and local community leaders.
- Empathy: Community service requires genuine and thoughtful actions, which cannot be done without compassion and empathy. You demonstrate your empathy by genuinely caring for others and by working passionately towards a cause that is close to your heart. Most importantly, ‘joint decision-making’ is an important aspect of community service. This is fundamental to community engagement and is a good indicator of empathy as well.
- Complex Information processing: The rise in complex information processing is related to the need to be informed of market trends, operations governed by complex regulations, or the need to comprehend and explain to potential clients the technical aspects of a business’ products or services. Social entrepreneurship will make you think about macro and micro level issues locally as well globally. You will be interacting with local municipal corporations to national level policy makers and corporate.
- Adaptability: Many social entrepreneurs start off with a burning passion to create change, however, social issues are multifaceted and hence there is no straightforward way to tackle them. Therefore, they are often flexible in their approach as long as it helps them reach their goal – making a real difference.
- Creativity: You can develop and furnish your creativity by creating high-quality marketing strategies to engage with communities, supporters and investors.
Checklist: are you ready to volunteer virtually?
Here’s a list of factors, you can take into consideration, to gauge whether you are ready and have what it takes to be an online volunteer.
- Do you have consistent access to the internet?
- Are you a self-starter?
- Do you have enough time to spare?
List of Virtual Community Service Examples
We have listed the following general ideas that members from any background can participate in. If you are looking for a more specific and tailored list, read below to learn about community service activities for students studying different majors, such as psychology, music, business and science.
General Ideas
- Identify areas where people who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19 can be retrained, such as construction workers.
- Teach calculus and algebra to underprivileged children online.
- Mentor underprivileged students online to provide them career advice.
- Translate documents if you are fluent in two or more languages.
- Organize a virtual fundraiser to raise funds for a local agency, charity, or cause.
- Manage an online charity auction.
- Prepare sales and marketing tools for online fundraising.
- Create and manage websites.
- Help NGOs or social impact organisations with creative content writing.
- Use your social media skills to manage social media accounts.
- Help and encourage people to register on the Aarogya Sethu app.
- Implement social media campaigns to spread the correct information about COVID-19 and to bust myths.
- Implement a social media campaign on environmental sustainability.
- Provide free online transcribing services.
- Record audio versions of public domain books for NGOs working in disability.
If you are looking to do community service that is more relevant for the degree you are majoring in, check our suggestions below.
Community Service for Visual Arts Students
In order to enable students to stand out from the crowd, they must be equipped to express their ideas visually, to quickly put together an appealing video or to build a simple prototype to pitch a new idea. We need to place the same emphasis on creativity and the principles of design as we do on statistics. We need to give importance to colour theory, as we do to the grammar of sentences. We need to teach students to use video-editing software, like we teach them to use spreadsheets.
- Make videos or e-cards for medical professionals thanking them for their above-and-beyond care for patients.
- Send thank you videos or e-cards to First Responders who are combating the Coronavirus.
- Create free graphic designs for NGOs and charities.
- Conduct online arts classes for children in government schools.
- Teach vocational skills such as stitching to underprivileged communities, including women.
- Teach how to use digital tools like Canva to high school and college students from government schools.
- Create artwork and sell it to raise money for charities like animal shelters.
- Raise funds by donating your artwork
- Work on brand image and visual identity for NGOs
- Design newsletters and annual reports for organisations.
Community Service for Psychology Students.
It is very important for psychology students to demonstrate empathy, communication and emotional intelligence. Providing community service can enable students to develop these skills and practice them whilst also serving the community for a greater cause.
- Post on social media about how COVID-19 affects an individual’s mental health.
- Organise a social media campaign to bust the misinformation surrounding COVID-19’s impact on one’s mental health.
- Spread information on social media about mental health issues to destigmatize it.
- Provide free or cheap therapy sessions if you are qualified to do so.
- Volunteer at night lines to listen to those in need.
- Sign up to write letters, create cards or send postcards to senior citizens living in care facilities who have had to self-isolate during the crisis.
- Volunteer at crisis centres that aim to answer texts/calls from people experiencing a crisis. Training will be provided.
- Start a podcast or write a book.
- Organise drop-in sessions online about mental health issues.
- Create an Instagram page that lists details of therapists to contact and how much they charge
Community Service for Music Students
It is very difficult to obtain paid work in the entertainment industry, including music. Since it is an increasingly competitive field, it is always beneficial to gain more practice to stand out from the crowd. Community service can be an excellent way to develop some sought after skills.
- Organise online Battle of the Bands event to encourage talented underprivileged children to participate.
- Sing or play original music online to elders at old-age homes or care facilities.
- Teach children at orphanages in a fun and interesting manner.
- Give free music lessons to school children.
- Organise an online music event to raise funds for a charity.
- Play at online community events pro-bono to raise funds for a charity.
- Sell your instruments online to raise funds for a charity.
- Auction your instruments online and donate the funds.
- Start an online music camp.
Community Service for Business Management Students
Providing community service is an efficient method to gain industry-specific skills such as commercial awareness. These skills will enhance a business management student’s employability, whilst also allowing them to serve the community.
- Create a business plan for small businesses affected by COVID-19.
- Volunteer and provide online services -managing their database and even fundraising strategy
- Use the knowledge gained through your studies to raise money for small businesses that are struggling because of the pandemic or better help them sell their products online.
- Offer sessions aimed at improving students’ soft skills such as communication and body language.
- Teach English to college students, dropouts and adults online.
- Offer free drop-in sessions to offer career advice to students.
- Share material about the basics of business management for aspiring MBA students.
Community Service for Science Students
Doing community service is a good way for STEM students to put their theoretical knowledge to use. They can use their theoretical knowledge to develop practical tools that would help people. Not only is community service a great opportunity for science students to develop their practical skills, but it also provides them a platform to experiment.
- Organise student-led hackathons.
- Offer tuition classes to underprivileged children in STEM subjects.
- Act as a teaching assistant online as experienced tutors and mentors.
- Offer career guidance to students, use technology and create a portal.
- Help students work on their college applications and resumes.
- Offer IT support or other technical support to organisations that need it.
- Perform visually aesthetic science experiments online to raise funds for charities or NGOs.
- Offer online coding classes.
- Organise a virtual science fair.
- Design a website or web application for a cause that you love.
Next Steps
Although people can do a lot of community service on their own, there are certain advantages and benefits to pursuing structured community service programs. We offer many such programs to people from diverse backgrounds.
If you are looking for a place to start but are unsure how to do so, TribesforGOOD can help. We aim to help youngsters who are striving to make change but are unaware of the opportunities and lack the connections required to do so. We provide just the solution for that!
If you don’t know where to start, don’t have the time to research or can’t wait to get started with hands-on work, check out our Young Changemakers program here.
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