This week is National Student Volunteer Week and to celebrate we’re shining some light on our amazing student volunteers who work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring our most popular events to life.
There are so much to gain from volunteering as a student – hear from Laavanya about her experience on the Great Vic Bike Ride.
Meet Laavanya
What motivated you to volunteer on the Great Vic Bike Ride?
I think this was such a great opportunity to experience Australian culture, get to know people, surround myself with people who were obsessed with ‘over-riding’ their brains by doing something that requires a lot of resilience. As a content creator (pssssttt - please follow me on IG @capturesmagic) who’d just landed in Australia and was really keen to do off-beat stuff cause it’s what I thrive on, this all in all seemed like the perfect opportunity for me and thankfully it was!
Tell us a bit about your role on the flying squad team.
I as a person am very dynamic and love having access to as much knowledge in multiple fields as possible, the flying squad fit perfectly with this trait of mine, I was able to bartend, help with the happiness team, with the signage, with camp set-up, with the food team, the operations team, the bikes and practically understanding what each team does, how the event is run at such a large scale. It is pretty awesome what they pull off here!
What is your favourite thing about volunteering?
I think everyone was really warm, and our team lead Grant, just did a fabulous job at making us all feel warm and welcomed, it’s a learning experience and despite extreme weather conditions, all of us volunteers stuck together, and it was inspiring to see how people much older to me were able to execute tasks that we often in our day-to-day lives are told are “not suitable for older people”. I think my favourite part was the break throughs, I overcame a lot of limiting beliefs, just by having the opportunity to be present.
What skills or knowledge have you gathered from volunteering that will help you in life/your future career path?
I think I answered this in the question before, because my favourite part involves learning and gathering skills, like the ones I gathered by working with different teams, in extreme weather conditions, I learnt how to finish up tasks regardless of what thoughts and feelings I was dealing with. It gives you a massive sense of accomplishment by the end of it. It helped me be present.
What advice would you give to a student who is thinking about volunteering?
As students I think we have the luxury of gathering as many experiences as possible because while we have responsibilities, we also can get away with a lot, thanks to the label of being a student, some places being labeled helps I suppose (if you know you know). It’s not going to be a breeze, at times you might want to do other things, but the team and the warmth makes everything worth it and at the end of it, you’ll grow as a person! If experiences are what you are after, this is such a good time to have, I can fully vouch for that!
Thank you Laavanya!
If you or someone you know would like to get involved, you learn more here.
Or become our friend and subscribe to receive our fortnightly newsletter.