Last week was National Volunteers Week in Australia and we celebrated at Pines Learning with our annual Thank you lunch.
The theme was Give Happy, Live Happy! which is apt because studies have shown that volunteering not only adds value to the economy, provides assistance across so many vital areas of society helping organisations like ours to run, but it also improves the happiness and quality of life for those doing the volunteering – a Win-Win for all!
A study in 2015 was able to determine the hourly rate for the replacement cost of a volunteer between the ages of 55-64 at $45.20, though of course many benefits of volunteering such as civic engagement cannot be qualified.
We know our volunteers at Pines Learning are priceless and without them, EAL classes in particular, would be very difficult to run.
Volunteers help out in a variety of ways here, sometimes in the office, sometimes within specific classes but more broadly across the EAL area assisting students to learn English. Volunteers can serve as a friendly reassuring face, an alternative point of view, an opportunity to practise English one on one or within a small group and are integral to us being able to offer such a high quality English program.
Across Australia, volunteers contribute more than 700 million hours of unpaid work each year to their local communities. All of us at Pines Learning thank our volunteers for the part they play in that.
