There’s a different kind of volunteering out there – that doesn’t involve animals, or disadvantaged people, or children. This kind uses your own business knowledge, to help inspire and encourage young people. And this is what eBay does – corporate volunteering.

I’m part of the Giving Works volunteer team at eBay, and whilst we do all the above kinds of volunteering, the “corporate volunteering” part is especially interesting to me. In this case, it involved inviting a few university students to our offices for a day, where they could ‘shadow’ eBay employees and chat with us about our work. In turn, we can share our experiences with them, our thoughts about business, and provide advice to them whereever we can.

In actual fact, it’s having fun talking to them 🙂

My session was over lunch time – excellent! That meant we had pizzas ordered in, and could have a casual chat as we stuffed our faces. For me, they were mostly interested in what I thought about cultural differences coming from Australia to Shanghai. And many asked if it was worth going overseas for education and/or working for a few years. It was a very open and interactive session, which is my kind of thing.

Had a good time. I’m proud eBay holds programs such as this and supports us doing this 🙂