[princessmarisa]

I have volunteered in a primary school a couple of times, for weeks or months at a time, both as a teaching assistant and an I.T technician to help them out when their only I.T guy went MIA!
It was when I was considering retraining to be a teacher (I still might in the future, when I save up some money to make it easier to go back to being a student) It was great experience, working with children was far more rewarding than I ever imagined. Especially finding ways to work with children who are new to the country and having difficulties with language and culture.
It was also quite shocking to see the amount of bullying between pre-teen girls!

I also did some voluntary work in a upper school as part of a module at Uni, where I assessed the teaching of I.T to some English as an Additional Language students. I was shocked to find a History teacher who could barely turn a PC on, teaching a GCSE level vocational course. Examples such as using powerpoint to write essays and make spreadsheet like tables by drawing boxes will scar me forever.

How can we equip the future generations for rewarding careers without teaching them decent IT skills? Not many jobs now function without use of a computer, in the future even less jobs will exist for those who can't adapt to technology well.

I also spent a morning helping out at a Japanese parents and toddlers group.

Oh and I have helped my local community centre with I.T issues a few times as a favour. As a return favour they paid me onto a Child Safeguarding course learning about protecting children from the different and often seen as more subtle types of abuse and the damaging consequences overlooking such things have. Makes me think people should need a license (or at least a psychology degree or similar) to become parents all the things people don't realise are not acceptable, such as teaching children intolerance, smothering them and hindering their independence, feeding them a poor diet etc.

Volunteering opens your eyes to a lot of things if you do it with an active mind I feel.

I like volunteering, they seem to be far more interesting jobs than ones you can get paid for. It is strange that I can volunteer and do well as I.T technician, play group worker, teaching assistant, etc. Yet when it comes to applying for jobs like these I am not experienced enough to be given a chance.