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Volunteering seems to be a very American thing, now that I've lived abroad and traveled quite a bit--and while I often have a hard time giving blind praise to the US, I must say that I'm damn proud of the model of civic participation that is so prevalent in America. I have not seen another country with the same culture of volunteerism as I have seen in the US (though perhaps Dlish can inform me about Australia).
Throughout high school and college, volunteering was a big deal to me. I liked working with immigrants (or immigrant kids--e.g. reading programs) most of all, though I also worked with homeless teens in a GED-earning setting at a local shelter. We were also required to do a ton of volunteering when I was at the evangelical university, since the main part of our "mission" was to engage the world through social activism. That was one thing that I liked a lot about my university.
Since graduating, though, and living in Iceland (and going to grad school, in a small college town where volunteering wasn't a huge deal), I've missed the involvement of volunteering that I had back in Seattle. I hope to get back to it soon, as I feel it really puts you in touch with the often-neglected parts of your community, which is necessary if you don't want to isolate yourself among people of your same class and ethnicity, for example. Ideally, I'd like my day job to be something along the lines of what I used to volunteer to do (helping immigrants), because I feel it's important enough to warrant spending my career focusing on that--but we'll see what comes up when we return to the States.
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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran
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