What does it feel like to volunteer in a year of crisis and rebuilding? Inside the emotional journey of volunteers navigating change, purpose, and connection.
Volunteering is often framed in terms of tasks, outcomes, and impact. But behind every schedule and spreadsheet lies another reality – the emotional landscape that each volunteer walks over the course of a service year.
In Elul’s Shnat Sherut 50 Plus program, volunteers arrive with full lives: careers, families, griefs, and hopes. They come with the desire to contribute and are met by the complexity of living and serving in communities that are not their own. Some are welcomed instantly. Others wait for weeks to feel a sense of place. Some face overwhelming demand. Others struggle with feeling underutilized.
This is the deeper truth of service. It is not just about what volunteers do, but how they feel. How they adapt. And how they discover meaning, even when the path is unclear.
Alone in a Moshav, Together in a Mission
Several volunteers live and work in rural moshavim, where daily life can be quiet – sometimes painfully so. Without central gathering spaces or natural meeting points, loneliness can creep in despite doing deeply meaningful work with families, soldiers, and community members.
Others describe the challenge of entering tight-knit communities where they were not born or raised, while simultaneously being tasked with helping residents feel at home again after displacement or trauma. Living alone in a small place while trying to offer connection to others is a paradox many learn to hold with grace.
The Frustration of the Undefined
Not every volunteer experience begins smoothly. A few started their year without a clear placement or arrived to find that their role had not been prepared. One person arrived with decades of leadership experience, only to be met with an empty office and little direction. This is one of the realities of being a pioneer in a completely new type of program.
What stands out is not the logistical breakdowns but the quiet resilience that followed. These volunteers didn’t leave. They waited, listened, adjusted. They carved out purpose where none had been offered. They did not take the roles they were given, but created the roles that were needed.
Grief at the Table
For those serving in communities deeply affected by the events of October 7, grief is a steady presence. It hums beneath the surface of daily life. Volunteers working in clinics, schools, and cafés describe the quiet pain of being with people who have lost so much and the responsibility of showing up, consistently and without pretence.
Some offer physical help. Others simply sit beside a grieving colleague or neighbor, keeping them company through daily routines. It is humble work, but it is human work. Presence, in these moments, is an offering in itself.
Finding Belonging in the Smallest Places
The emotional journey is not all weight and weariness. Many volunteers describe moments of unexpected joy – a dance session where faces become familiar, or the comfort of daily greetings in a clinic. Belonging often begins not in grand gestures, but in repetition. In being missed when you’re not there. In knowing the names around the table. Indeed, many of the volunteers describe the decision to serve for a year at the age of 50 plus “The best thing I have ever done!”
Some have found renewed purpose after early frustration or having to shift placements mid-year. They speak of the quiet reward that comes from rebuilding slowly, choosing presence again and again, with care and intention.
The Inner Journey
One volunteer once joked that he wasn’t the “poster child” of the program. But in many ways, he was. Because the heart of Shnat Sherut 50 Plus is not perfection. It is the courage to show up. To try, to adjust, to sit with uncertainty, and to keep going.
This is the emotional terrain of volunteering. It is not always easy. But it is real. And in walking it, volunteers not only support the healing of others – they are transformed themselves.
