How to Make Volunteering Fun? | Niharika Burugapalli | TEDxFergusonLibrary

Volunteering and fun are two words that are not often paired together in a single sentence. I hope to empower youth to change their approach to volunteering by creatively integrating their personal hobbies and talents into helping others. I believe that anyone can positively impact the community around them by simply sharing what they love to do.

Niha is a first-year student at the University of Toronto who enjoys finding the intersections in her passions like art, service, and science. She has had the pleasure of exhibiting her paintings in local art galleries and museums in Connecticut as well as the US Capitol Building. She uses her paintings as a form of activism, drawing attention to society’s pivotal problems to enact positive change. Through art, she has been able to experientially demonstrate that it’s never too late to learn something new, challenging ageism and combating society’s negative perception of the elderly by teaching guided painting sessions to people in nursing homes who may not have painted since childhood. Art’s healing properties led her to connect with patients in rehabilitation units of hospitals. Over the past years, she’s had the humbling experience of painting alongside people from Vietnam veterans to cancer survivors to people recovering from traumatic brain injuries. She hopes to keep finding innovative ideas to help people with her art and other interests and hopes that sharing her experience and ideas can empower students to find new ways to integrate their own talents into helping others. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx