This week we’re celebrating the National Student Volunteer Week as we acknowledge our talented and amazing student volunteers at Volunteering Gold Coast. Let’s meet Honoka!
Name:
Honoka Sakakibara
What are your motivations for volunteering/interning with Volunteering Gold Coast?
I am studying international tourism at university and I am interested in supporting and hosting events with different people. I also like meeting new people and getting to know them.
Is there a cause that is close to your heart?
Helping women and children in the community.
Are there particular skills you want to contribute or learn?
I have two things I would like to learn and the first one is business English skills. Because I am from overseas, I would like to gain English skills particularly used in business. The second skill is cooperating skill. In the future, I will definitely belong to some communities and I will have to work together with people there, and I would like to learn how to cooperate with others to accomplish one thing.
Your personal goals: how important is it for you to gain satisfaction and happiness from helping others, as well as having fun and enjoying yourself in the process?
For me, helping people gives me satisfaction a lot because when I see people smiling after I have done something to them, I feel so glad and it becomes my motivation to keep working for other people.
Your life goals and what you would like to achieve when graduating: consider the way that volunteering could help you achieve these goals.
I would like to be the one who gives happiness and joy to somebody’s life. I am not so sure what I want to do or where I want to work at the moment, but even after this volunteer opportunity, I would like to work for people and help their lives at some point. I am sure this internship experience will definitely help my future carer.
How important it is to challenge yourself – get out of your comfort zone, become more independent, and be confronted by something new
For me, it is important to challenge myself because that is how we grow. I honestly do not like to challenge myself much because I do not want to make mistakes. However, I also understand making mistakes definitely makes me grow up. I think making mistakes is even more important than challenging myself because I will have to work out how to overcome the problem and I will learn a lot from it.