2018 Volunteer Expo
Our Career Development team is hosting a Volunteer Expo in Te Puna on 29 August 2018.
Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community and for our students to get valuable work experience on their CV before leaving Unitec, plus new skills and networking opportunities!
Staff are all welcome to come along and explore if volunteering is some- thing they’d like to get involved in. Offering your time as a volunteer can help create new networks, experience a different area of business and be inspired by others.
Many of our staff volunteer so we’ve been sharing their stories on the Nest. In this post Michele Harrod talks about volunteering at Hospice. Previous posts include –
__________________________
Find out more about volunteering!
Make sure you come along to the Volunteer Expo on 29 August 2018.
Bring your students along!
Please encourage your students to come along or talk with Deborah Crossan or Dianna Bluck to find out more. |
Staff who volunteer: Michele Harrod says that volunteering at Hospice helps remind her to appreciate her health and everything else she has, that is often so easily taken for granted.
 Michele and her ‘daily reminders’ Michele is a full time Lecturer/Cohort Leader in the NZ Certificate in Animal Care, but not that long ago she was a student studying here at Unitec.
Who did you volunteer for?
Mercy Hospice in St Mary’s Bay.
What did this involve?
Visiting two days a week and delivering either morning tea, or evening pre-dinner drinks to patients and their visitors.
What inspired you to volunteer?
I had the time and wanted to give back – I chose Hospice as they had taken such wonderful care of close friends in the past.
How did you manage to balance your commitment to Hospice alongside a life and studying at Unitec?
I made this a priority. I was studying full time and ran my own business – yet strangely, I found the tranquillity of being in such a peaceful and loving space provided ME with a huge sense of balance in an otherwise stressful life.
What’s the key thing you got out of volunteering?
At the time, I had just started studying, and as a mature student I was rather worried about things like, ‘did I make the right decision leaving my (highly paid) corporate career to study? Will I be able to manage financially? Will I adapt to being a student?’ I was also worrying about suddenly being in my 40’s. But, at the end of my very first shift, and every single one thereafter, I would walk out the front door, take a deep breath, look up at the sky and say to myself ‘what was I worrying about today? Oh, that’s right: nothing important’.
I was reminded to appreciate my health and all that I do have, that is so easily taken for granted. The grace, courage and dignity that I saw in every patient there, inspires me to this day.
Michele is currently ‘on leave’ from Hospice now that she is a full-time teacher and still runs her small business. She has though mapped out as part of her proposed semi-retirement strategy, to return to volunteering at Hospice. |
