I took early retirement a few years ago having worked in a fairly intense business environment for over 30 years.  While retirement was most welcome, it did present some challenges.

It seemed such a waste to throw away 30 years of experience, professional and otherwise. I also wanted to keep in touch with and feel part of the “real world” and to feel useful. Volunteering was a way to deal with these new challenges while giving back- could volunteering be a win-win situation? I thought I would try it and find out. 

I am relatively new to the volunteering experience.  Currently, I volunteer one day a week helping with administrative tasks at Dublin City Volunteer Centre.  The work is straightforward but productive and it’s rewarding to think that I am helping staff by freeing up their time to support more people to get started volunteering.

Volunteering allows me to use my skills & experience and to learn new skills which I might otherwise never have had the opportunity to learn. While I spent much of my working life longing for the freedom of retirement, ironically, I am finding that I enjoy the structure and commitment that volunteering brings to my newly unstructured life. Along with reconnecting with the “real world”, an unexpected benefit was the opportunity to meet a diversity of people I would not have met in the past and whose company I have enjoyed and learnt from.

For me, volunteering offers all these advantages and the added feeling that I may be helping to make life a little easier for somebody, even if it is only in a small way. 

A win–win situation!