A visual take on volunteering

Last year, when I lived in New York, I signed up to receive occasional updates from one of the biggest volunteering organisations in the US called VolunteerMatch. This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a notification informing me that VolunteerMatch had teamed up with Google Earth to literally provide, as they say, ‘a new vision of volunteering’. The video below will probably explain it way better than anyone can, so take a look. 

The thing about volunteering (and we should know, working as we are with Vinspired to encourage youngsters in the age group 16-25 in the UK to volunteer in larger numbers than they currently are), is that most people do it for two reasons: out of an altruistic desire to change the world and contribute to the society they live in, or in the case of young people, often to add value to their CV. If you consider the first reason, the desire to feel part of a larger community and have a close look at what kinds of options matching your interest exist in the area you live in, are of vital importance. At Made By Many, we are interested in data visualization and how that impacts interactions in the online world. This video is a great example of how a service like Google Earth can make potential volunteers much more interested in the actual act of volunteering, simply by visually presenting their options to them in a way that they didn’t have access to earlier. Good stuff.