Volunteering and Leadership

Finding an organization to volunteer with was not difficult at all, especially with the abundance of organizations listed on volunteerwny.org. Browsing through the organizations, I quickly found something I was interested in: the Buffalo Museum of Science. I followed the links until I reached the contact information for the museum. I only had to wait a week before I was contacted requesting that I call the museum with details on when I would like to volunteer. It was only after getting the date and time arranged that I realized that the museum was not in the nearby area and I would have to work out transportation.

On the first day (of two days), I was able to take the bus to South Campus, the metro to the end of the line, and then a bus to within a five minute walk of the museum. Signing in was rather simple, just my signature and time started required. It must have been apparent that I had never been to the museum before because the woman I had talked to on the phone said she would show me to the exhibits that I would be spending my day in. I was supposed to be responsible for one of the exhibits, the engineering and mechanical exhibit (how fitting), but for that weekend, fewer people turned out than how many had been arranged to show up. The three exhibits I was responsible for were the engineering and mechanical exhibit, the outer space exhibit, and the Earth exhibits. All three were close by so it would be manageable.

The first hour and a half went without seeing a single family or individual. I went around and organized the already clean exhibits and after that was done, I began to fiddle with a display that blows air through tubes to get a ball from one place to another. You could move the tubes to have the ball...

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...lp them find their father. It may not be necessary to carry them to their father, but finding someone who has contact with the rest of the museum may be extremely helpful. If the leader can react quickly and intelligently, then they will be more successful leaders than a leader who can do one or neither.

Part of becoming a better leader is through experience. You can gain knowledge of leadership in the classroom, but in order to utilize and improve upon the knowledge you have learned in the classroom, you must experience it firsthand. Volunteering is a great way to gain experience. There are so many opportunities to volunteer and each opportunity offers unique exposure to new elements of leadership. Volunteering puts you out of your comfort zone and gives leaders the opportunity to work with new challenges and situations that can expand and develop a leader.