Community and volunteer work I consider a must in everyones’ life.

I am happy I can spend part of my and Chefparade resources (time, money, facilities) for things that don’t bring us money but let us help people and organisations that need it. When we think about supporting some project, we tend to consider these three things:

i) system vs hands-on help
Let’s say, you want to do something about dog poo on the streets of your community.
What you can do is organise group of people or your friends / family every Saturday morning and clean it up.
That would surely help, but I believe it is important to know “why”.
Why is so much poo on the street?
Maybe you would realise, there is no help for dog owners to clean it up.
So, in case they forgot their “poo bag” they will simply leave it as it is.
Should you work with local council and put stands with “poo bags” and containers on the street and places where people with dogs go, you would solve most of the problem.

Build a system that helps prevent the problem vs try to get rid of results of a problem.

ii) scale
Think about how many people you can influence with your community work.
If you mentor somebody 1 – 1 you are helping 1 person.
If you do the same for group of people on some conference you are then helping tens, maybe even hundred people.
If you create a blog where you share your knowledge, you can help thousands, even millions of people.

It requires bit more time and effort to do, but the impact you make is tremendously bigger.

iii) multiplication effect
Creating a social enterprise company may help some cause and also employ some people. Thing is, if you’re good at it and you would teach 10 people how to create social enterprise company that would result in more causes helped and more people employed. Multiplication effect of your work would have much bigger impact than running your own social enterprise.