Are we missing the point?
View(s):As far as I can remember, I have always wanted to volunteer – do something good, make life better for others.
The journey has been good so far, but lately I have been challenged by various experiences and people, who have made me think a little deeper. While agreeing the need for volunteerism exists, I have been questioning if that is enough. How is it addressing the root causes we are responding to? How is it sustained?
And how are we engaging with those who volunteer? I had many reasons for volunteering, mostly around my childhood experiences of hardship, the war and wanting to change everything that was wrong with the world, which burned within me to make life better for others in every way I can.
I have and come to realize that both young and old volunteer their time and resources for many reasons – most often it is because of their personal experiences in life and the need to help someone else. Sometimes it is because of the “guilt factor” and lately, within youth, I have learnt it’s a lot to do with the need to socialize. While all of the above are valid reasons to volunteer, I feel the danger lies in this action not having an impact on the lives of the volunteer, which I argue is vital.
My own experience has been that most often, volunteering has a positive impact not only in the lives of people we volunteer for, but also in the life of the volunteer. It is a two way change process, and it changes you when you engage with any cause that you are passionate about. The danger in volunteering for “feel good” factors and socialization is that this restricts the need or the space to engage with the issue that you are volunteering for, and my fear is that while we have a bunch of youth who may volunteer to paint a school or even donate books they really don’t engage themselves enough to understand why the resources aren’t available for that school or the children for their basic educational needs .
What I have seen recently is that young people are volunteering without really even being bothered about the cause, and sadly, most people and organizations continue to engage these youth volunteers as mindless creatures, without the capacity to comprehend more than just the standard volunteering initiatives such as painting, creating hype or lending their energy. Don’t get me wrong, I think all of the above are good, but I strongly believe young people can do a lot more than this! I believe they have the will, the passion and the capacity to do more than this, and I believe they must.
We as facilitators of the space for youth to volunteer need to be intent not only about resolving our immediate need, but also looking at what we can do to engage them so they understand the problem better, which will lead them to want to take it further than just superficial needs.
The danger in just getting them to do the work so that organizations can continue to brag about how we “engaged” youth is that we miss out an opportunity to influence a future leader, whatever their aspirations are. This is important, because not all youth will want to be social workers or humanitarians – and they shouldn’t be. But, whatever profession they choose it is our duty to engage them now in the spaces we create for volunteerism because only then will the chances of them taking on the ‘fight’ be greater.
This is important; this needs to be the thinking of volunteerism and of any organization that creates spaces for youth to volunteer. We need to look beyond the feel-good and look-good factors for organizations and the individuals volunteering. If not we really are missing the point!
This column was written by a STITCH volunteer to learn more visit www.stitchmovement.com.
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