Volunteer Work!

“There’s nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer”- Jimmy Doolittle

Western civilization realized the gravity of the thought and placed extra value in community and volunteer work. On the façade, it keeps people- young and old alike, occupied and provides one with a chance to meet new and wonderful people. Not wanting to appear like I see everything through rose-coloured glasses, I concede that not all encounters may be pleasant. But life is a sum of moments and unagreeable situations also provide us with an opportunity to learn.

On a deeper level, continued and constant volunteering helps develop a sense of community and camaraderie. “Man is a social animal” and for the society to work well in a civilized manner it is important for everyone to feel a sense of belonging and bonhomie. Community and volunteer work thus involve us in day-to-day activities and help us in developing insight. It makes us conscious and active members of the society and nation, and helps us develop a sense of accountability. Volunteering is thus a two-way street. It can help a volunteer just as much as it helps the cause.

My stint as a coordinator in the recently concluded Career Fair in Jaipur painted a very different picture. People usually find the concept of volunteer work (UNPAID) to not be unpaid at all, but effectively as a meager paying job. This assumption leads to more personal assumptions regarding an individual’s (UNPAID VOLUNTEER) intellect and achievements. The idea of “work for work’s sake” is probably very lofty (read debasing) in their eyes. Worse still, the people who do recognize volunteer work for what it is (they comprehend it as labour for FREE) find it impossible to get over the “FREE” part written between the lines. My personal feelings aside (although I admit feeling a bit enraged by such naïve perceptions), this stint proved to be a more fulfilling experience than I had previously hoped.

It made me understand the culture of India in general. The idea of volunteer work, as I mentioned before has received a lot of traction in the western world and this is a clear signature of development. Not only economic development, but also moral and societal development. More than sixty years after independence, India still remains naively young country albeit vastly more populated. Due to this difficulty of plenty, most Indians fell an obsessively compulsive need to stand out in a crowd. The “I” in us supersedes the “we” of society and community. As Harsha Bhogle pointed out in his book “The Winning Way”, “our large population forces us to develop selfish instincts at every step.” ”Feelings of comradeship, of surrendering the self to the wider cause, can only arise in a highly spiritual phase or where the performer of great achievements has ascended to a level of personal calm about those achievements.” Indeed, this is the reason Indians rate badly in teamwork generally.

On a more personal note, after the initial discomfit over the perceptions, I returned back to my original self-assured form, and if anything found the entire situation quite amusing besides entertaining. And last but not the least, I did get a chance to work with like-minded individuals which made for a pleasant experience.