Benefits of Volunteering
It is easy to justify volunteer time commitment when you understand the enormous benefits of doing so.
If you can stand in a classroom full of middle schoolers and explain what an architect does, and the details of a project that you’ve worked on, you will be able to increase your ability to answer questions from even the most challenging clients. Volunteering can improve your leadership skills, mental health and sense of purpose.
Lead: Create and implement a project with students
Learn: Explain architecture to students as you would to clients; Gain insight into how children experience the built environment
Improve: Increase mental health and life satisfaction
Creating a firm culture that encourages volunteerism also has many benefits.
Many firms incorporate volunteerism into their culture despite this work taking time out of their busy schedule. They can justify this given the enormous professional development benefits to their employees.
Children are constantly impacted by design, whether it’s the hospitals around them, their places of worship, their schools, retail, hotels or museums. Volunteering with children is an opportunity to get more insight into their world. It’s also an opportunity for firms to build relationships within their communities, to uncover future clients and their connections. As far as volunteers themselves, it can really help to reignite that spark about why they went into architecture in the first place, reminding them about their passion for the field. It’s also a great opportunity within the firm to put employees together to create an activation for students for team-building purposes.
Connect: Build relationships within your community; Uncover future clients and connections
Retain: Remind employees of their initial spark
Build: Use volunteering as an opportunity for internal team-building
More information: Youth Programs Manager, Heidi Sohng at hsohng@aiadc.com, phone 202-908-2804
General YOUTH PROGRAMS
Submit a volunteer form
Contact
To Volunteer for WAF Youth Programs:
Heidi Sohng
Youth Programs Manager
hsohng@aiadc.com
202-908-2804
Please note
All volunteers must submit a volunteer application and participate in an orientation session.
Architecture in the Schools requires DCPS clearance. Other programs require medical & background checks from The Washington Architectural Foundation.