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Tag: helping others

  • Careers in Helping Others

    Careers in Helping Others

    Everyone needs help at some point. You probably get help from your teachers or classmates when you have trouble understanding something in class. At home, your family members help you, and you do the same for them. Do you enjoy helping others? Someday, you could turn your enjoyment into a career.

    Suppose that your friend falls and breaks a leg. You might not be able to help much now. However, if you decided to become a doctor, you might be able to do more in the future. Medical jobs are good ways to help others feel better and to be able to get back to their lives. For example, physiotherapists help injured people get movement back into injured arms, legs, and back, and paramedics help people in emergencies. Working in these fields can be very rewarding, and the pay is often very good, as well.

    Other careers in helping people are not as high paid as medicine, but they can also be very good. Teachers help students to learn the skills and knowledge that they will need later in life. What if someone is struggling with depression or anxiety? Counsellors and psychologists help people in schools and other places to get through difficult times and to understand their lives better. Social workers help people who are dealing with family issues or other problems.

    A special kind of counsellor often gives very useful advice. Career counsellors help people decide what kind of work they want to do and let them know what kind of education they need to get. These counsellors should be good at searching for information and be willing to work with all kinds of people to help them decide on their best job choices.

    Do you already help the poor at places like soup kitchens or food banks? When you grow up, you could work at a charity that helps low-income people or that works with building good housing or planting gardens. For some people, working in animal welfare to keep pets or farm animals safe and healthy could be a good option. If you like to travel and learn new languages, you could even do many kinds of work in countries like India or China. Overseas terms often include work in agriculture, medicine, teaching, and all kinds of development jobs.

    Some helping careers require a lot of education, but others need very little. Doctors study a long time to become qualified, and many overseas workers need Master’s degrees. In other cases, however, people might not need any education beyond high school. Salaries can vary widely, but often the jobs that require the most education are also the highest paid. However, some people prefer to work with organizations that pay very little but do important work.

    Helping people can lead to a good career for people who enjoy working with others. It might be the right choice for you.

    Bibliography:

    Inside Jobs Blog. “Top Jobs for Helping People.”

    http://www.insidejobs.com/blog/top-jobs-for-helping-people.

    Labrie, Julie. “What are the best career opportunities for helping others?” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/what-are-the-best-career-opportunities-for-helping-others/article4217858/

    Smith Jacquelyn. “The 25 Most Meaningful Jobs That Pay Well.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/07/the-25-most-meaningful-jobs-that-pay-well/#7ceea45b7c21.

    University of Kent. “I Want to Work In …Helping and Teaching Careers.” https://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/workin/helping.htm.

  • Paying it Forward with Volunteering

    Paying it Forward with Volunteering

    On special occasions such as birthdays or Christmas, many people like to give gifts to their family and friends. They might give objects like books or toys, or they might decide to give an experience like a trip to somewhere special.

    Often, people give gifts to people who have given them something in the past, but sometimes they help someone else instead. People call this action “paying it forward,” and one of the most common ways that people pay it forward is through volunteering. Do you ever pay it forward in this way?

    People have tried to help each other throughout history, but the term “pay it forward” is relatively new. It has become a popular idea since an author named Catherine Ryan Hyde used the term as the title of one of her books, in which she wrote about the concept of doing good things for others.

    The idea of paying it forward is fairly simple: people should give gifts or help to others instead of returning the favour only to the people who have helped them. For example, suppose that someone helped you by finding your lost bicycle. The next day, you might decide to help a third person with a problem that you know how to solve. That’s what paying it forward is all about; helping strangers or other people whom you might not normally help.

    Finding someone to help is not always very easy, but working for a volunteer project can be a good choice. Many Canadians are involved in volunteer work in different areas such as sports and recreation, social services, and education. They might coach a sports team, visit the elderly, or tutor at a school. Some people renovate houses for the poor or deliver baskets of food and gifts to people who can’t afford to buy what they need. Opportunities are available for almost any kind of volunteering.

    Suppose that you got help from a tutor in one of your classes when you were struggling to learn what you needed to know. You could pay it forward by volunteering as a tutor at your school or in a community centre. Or suppose that one of your friends wants to play on a sports team but lacks the necessary skills. Maybe you needed help when you wanted to get onto the team, and someone took the time to assist you. Now, maybe you want to give someone else the kind of help that you got. You and your friend could practice together after school.

    Volunteering and paying it forward is different for each person. Maybe you know how to teach writing or mathematics. Maybe you enjoy caring for animals or raking leaves. Whatever you can do to help people can be part of paying it forward. You might even start a new paying it forward movement and help to change the world, at least for a few people.

     

    Bibliography:

    Hay, Susan. Volunteer organization looks to ‘pay it forward’ http://globalnews.ca/news/1033474/walls-of-hope-make-a-difference-to-families-in-need/

    Pay It Forward Day.com. “About the Day.”

    http://payitforwardday.com/about/about-the-day/

    Vézina, Mireille and Susan Crompton. “Volunteering in Canada.” http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2012001/article/11638-eng.htm.

    Volunteer Action Centre. “Building Blocks for Youth Volunteer Engagement.” https://volunteer.ca/content/building-blocks-youth-volunteer-engagement.

     

     

  • Becoming a 911 Operator

    Becoming a 911 Operator

    You and your friends probably know that when someone is injured or in danger or otherwise needing assistance, they can call 911 and someone will come to help. It might be the police, paramedics in an ambulance or firefighters in a fire truck. The people who answered the phone and sent the help will not be there, however. Emergency operators for the 911 system don’t respond to crises themselves, but they work in call centres to help organize help for whatever people need.

    Imagine dealing with emergencies without a 911 system. If you saw a fire, you would have to call the fire department, but if you saw a store being robbed, you would have to call the police. A bad accident might require a call for an ambulance, and other situations might need all three. That could be very confusing and waste time as people tried to decide what number to call. The job of 911 operators helps to make the process easier.

    Basically, 911 operators take emergency calls and pass on the information to the right people. Sending the best help involves finding out as much as possible about the situation before doing anything else. The response for a fire, for example, will not be the same as the response to a heart attack.

    Before they send out help, operators need to find out what they can about the type and seriousness of a situation. They have to remain very calm, even when people are upset. If someone’s life is in danger, 911 operators have to be sure to send out the right type of help as quickly as possible.

    In Canada, most 911 operators work with the RCMP, although they work from call centres rather than in police stations. Canada has twenty-two federal or provincial call centres spread out around the country. They are the connection between people in need and the places that can send help.

    If you love to help people, you might want to become a 911 operator when you grow up!

     

  • Career Profile: Social Worker

    Career Profile: Social Worker

    Helping people can be a satisfying experience. You probably know the good feeling you get when you help your grandparents or friends with jobs that need to be done, such as raking leaves in the yard or helping them move to a new home. You might not enjoy everything about the job itself, but in the end, you can feel good about doing something to help people in need. If you enjoy helping people, even with difficult or unpleasant tasks, a career as a social worker might be right for you.

    Becoming a social worker is a bit like helping friends and family with the things they need to have done. Not everything that social workers do is pleasant or even safe. Sometimes they have to deal with dangerous situations and  it may seem as if nothing they do can help improve people’s lives. However, all of these struggles are part of their job.

    Basically, social workers help people in crisis. They might go into the hospital to help someone who needs assistance in everyday tasks because of an accident or major illness. In Canada, about 85% of social workers are in hospitals. Others take children from dangerous homes and find them safe places to live. Social workers help unemployed people, the homeless, people with physical or mental disabilities, young people who have committed crimes, and many others. To do this, they often work with counselors, psychologists, and other professionals.

    For each person or family that social workers help, they have to make a plan. They decide what information to give on government programs or arrange for meetings with a counsellor who can help people with their family, employment, or personal problems. It usually means spending time with the client (the person in need) to see what help is necessary. People are all different, and social workers have to try to find out the best treatment for each one. Over the next months or years, the social workers have to keep on checking in with the client to make sure that everything is working and report back to other people working in the field. Often, this means that they spend a lot of time writing reports on what they have done.

    Many people do social work without ever having official training. Someone who washes the dishes at a homeless shelter, for example, is doing social work. However, becoming a full-time, official social worker usually requires university training to learn the theories and principles of the field. A bachelor’s or master’s degree in social work or social services is often necessary for high-level jobs, although many lower-level workers often need no special education.

    A career in social work can be difficult, but it can have many rewards. If you like working with people and want to help them, it might be a good career path to consider.

  • Medical and Dental Assistants

    Medical and Dental Assistants

    When you go to a doctor’s or dentist’s office, you usually meet a few different people. Besides the other patients waiting for their appointments, there’s the receptionist who takes your name and then tells you when you can go in. The next person you see is probably the medical or dental assistant. These people help with a wide variety of tasks within a medical or dental office and are often a very important in the work of caring for the patients who come for treatment.

    The tasks of a medical or dental assistant can vary a lot, depending on training, the size of the office, and how the doctor or dentist likes to work. However, most assistants do a combination of working with the patients and doing paperwork. The paperwork might include taking down information about a patient’s previous illnesses and current state of health, making appointments, or writing down information for insurance payments.

    Working with patients might include helping a doctor give needles, weighing patients, taking x-rays of people’s teeth, and preparing dental fillings. In addition, medical and dental assistants might clean instruments such as dental tools, prepare the room for the next patient to come in, and generally be ready for anything the doctor or dentist needs. Assistants need to be ready for anything from sweeping the floor to dealing with medical emergencies.

    Most medical or dental assistants work in private offices and clinics. Their work is mostly self-regulated. This means that the requirements for the work depend largely on what their employers want them to do. Completing high school or its equivalent is usually a basic requirement, and most dental or medical assistants must know CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) in case a patient’s heart stops during a treatment. Many assistants also get special training and receive licenses to work in their field. The training is usually about ten months or a year at a technical school, with a heavy emphasis on scientific subjects like physics and biology. Taking the sciences in high school is a good way to prepare for this field.

    For medical assistants in Canada, salaries range from about $23,000 to $51,000 per year, and for dental assistants, they are between about $29,500 and a little over $53,000. Montreal currently has the lowest wages, and Alberta has the highest. Some employers pay more than others, but experience also helps move workers up to the higher salaries.

    Medical and dental assistants might never be featured on television shows or enjoy the high status that their employers have, but their work is essential in caring for the needs of patients. If you choose to get into this field, your work will help make many other people’s lives easier and better.