[bitL]

Not to be too cynical, but in my case volunteering resulted only in troubles and no growth at all. What I ended up beside some singular cases was fighting with people that internally resigned on something, accumulated bad habits but still narcissistically viewed themselves as perfect. The most brutal outcome was that the people I helped for free and dedicated a lot of time to improve their life, changed for much worse once they "saw the light" and their life improved - from a resigned person turned into a self-confident predator, throwing away most of human decency, trying to outright buy me or boss me. I really started to be cynical that perhaps there is a reason they were down and it was for the better... Then there are a few romantic, pure souls that are taken advantage of by everyone around them, ending up in the bottom - those are rare pearls that make it somewhat meaningful.

[ardit33]

Interesting. What kind of volunteering did you do (homeshelters, recovery...)?

My experience has been that you can only help people that really want it, (but don't know yet how to achieve what they want, but at least know that they need change).

As the old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink", you can't help somebody that really doesn't want to change themselves.