Now that you have finally left the company and the post that you have been serving for years after longing for retirement, you are enjoying your new retirement life with your beloved spouse.

However, here's the challenge – how are you going to use the extra eight hours in your day? If the day is just filled with morning tea, a nap in the afternoon, followed by waiting for dinner or for the children to return home, for a hardworking person like you, you will probably be feeling very unimportant. Not your cup of tea at all!

In fact being retired is perhaps the right time for many of us to start our road to community care. When at work, we focus all our efforts on achieving the best performance possible, to earn our living and save for the future. Now, in the second half of our lives, we can travel along a brand new path. Surely, some of us will choose to start a second career, or to begin the second half of life's plan., Many of us will probably say, why do we need to keep on working like an old and tired donkey?

Yet, why not adjust our focus and see the big picture, expanding from our immediate surroundings to the more needy in our society. In truth, we still have lots of energy as well as many skills which we can use to contribute to our society – help which will care for those who are less fortunate than we are and make a difference to those who have fewer opportunities than we have.

Of course, before embarking on this path, we must identify our interests and objectives, so that we can understand and accept those we are seeking to help. For instance, the elderly often have a strong body odour which is beyond their control – many of them are under heavy daily medication and the smell of the drugs on their skin is thus unavoidable. But if we find this hard to accept, how can we be interested in meeting and furthermore talking to them?

Start Small and Keep Going
Therefore, the first lesson in participating in volunteer services is to gain a thorough understanding of those who we are seeking to serve, so that we can develop a commitment and interest in them. We must ask ourselves that first and most important question: "What changes can we make for the people or agency that we are going to serve?"

It is also important to focus on our vision and mission while also learning how to differentiate from what can be done and what cannot be changed. If we only focus on what cannot be changed, we will only be wasting our time. Addressing issues where an impact can be made with even minor input, will create a strong sense of satisfaction, which will sustain our commitment and bring its own reward. More importantly, it will also help those who are being served feel our love and care.

After confirming our goals and objectives, we then need to enrich and enhance our service knowledge and skills. Were you an efficient administrator or successful marketing specialist, yet you have no knowledge of the elderly? No problems, there are plenty of volunteer training programmes under the Personal Emergency Link Volunteer Network, which can help, including –
1. Knowing the elderly in Hong Kong
2. Learning how to communicate effectively with the elderly
3. Knowing the taboos and the do's /don'ts when dealing with the elderly
4. Getting to know the service resources for the elderly in Hong Kong.

Interested? Watch out for the next issue! I will be introducing how to position yourself in volunteer services.

Timothy Ma
Registered social worker
Consultant of the Senior Citizens Home Safety Association

Continuous reading：
Self-defined Roles in Wonderful Volunteering Path
Be a Happy Volunteer