How can we enable the leaders of tomorrow if we just focus on knowledge-based outputs and achievements and we forget the essence, the core principles and values that can make children responsible and active citizens?
Considering the daunting challenges the world is facing, promoting and boosting volunteerism should be a no brainier. Making it easier for people to give their time, energies and skills to help tackling the many issues negatively affecting our society should be really an easy choice for governments around the world to make.
Yet volunteering remains largely out of fashion, neglected and overshadowed. We often focus on individual problems like climate change, but we tend to forget the unrelenting work, all free of charge, that activists are putting in with so much determination. We are living in a society so focussed on appearance and materialistic rewards. It is a society that puts a premium on the number of clicks on our social media posts but struggles to give volunteering its due.
But volunteering could really make a difference at multiple levels. I will never be tired of writing that volunteerism is not just a meaningful and effective tool to help solve the biggest problems. As explained by UNV, the United Nations arm promoting volunteering, "volunteerism makes people part of the solutions. It lets people and communities participate in their development".
But it's much more than this: it is also good for the people who practise it and embrace the universal values embedded in it. Through volunteering people can learn new competences, starting from soft skills, the so-called "people's skills" that are going to be so indispensable in an era that is going to be dominated by Artificial Intelligence.
But, oftentimes, you can also develop other essential know-hows and knowledge that a person can put in practice every single day. I wish more people would write about volunteerism these days, the forgotten "glue" that could tremendously help local communities to stay closer and more cohesive. Unfortunately, it is not happening. Yet those who passionately love volunteerism should not despair.
That's why, on a day like International Volunteer Day (Thursday), we should not lose hope and redouble our efforts to talk about it and promote it. Hope, let's remind ourselves, is really paramount especially when around the world there are so many complex challenges that seem to be unsurmountable. And volunteering is really a "hope multiplier", a catalyst for people not to lose sight that better times are possible.
I do know that these words might appear a little "cheesy", the usual high rhetoric. The world, some might argue, is too complex, and there is too much cynicism, people are greedy and what, at the end, counts is making money. Why should we waste our time on giving our skills and energies without getting anything back?
I am aware of this type of reasoning, but nevertheless we cannot surrender our high ideals and values-based principles to a vision of the world driven by a zero sum thinking. If we abandon ourselves to this logic, our planet, our lives would be ruined for good.
But, more practically, what can we do to promote a culture that can appreciate altruism and solidarity, two bedrocks of volunteering? To start with, families should be the first place where children learn about the importance of being kind to each other. Kindness, expressed in simple ways, is a starting point, the foundation for a life in which, of course, we prioritise ourselves but we do not forget to help out.
Schools also play a huge role in fostering a culture of generosity and giving. I do understand that schools, especially the public, community managed ones, face many challenges. Yet education and learning should be about setting "first things first".
How can we enable the leaders of tomorrow if we just focus on knowledge-based outputs and achievements and we forget the essence, the core principles and values that can make children not only successful in a materialistic way but also responsible and active citizens?
The theme of this year's International Volunteer Day is focused on enabling volunteering to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We often forget about these crucial goals, but, instead, they should represent a real "Call for Actions" that schools should prioritise.
The state has a huge responsibility in meeting the SDGs. Local, provincial and federal levels should do a much better job at harnessing volunteering as a very practical way to help achieving the SDGs that, in other words, means creating development and growth in an inclusive way.
Volunteering, in a way, "democratises" development and public policies because it involves and it engages people. As UNV shares in its website, "volunteers create a richer culture of service within their communities. They help bridge the gap between generations and support behind sustainable development". If we could only get rid of a "silos" approach that does a very poor job at linking things together.
Volunteering should be the one thing that brings all the societal and development areas together, the real "glue". Instead what happens is that we conveniently remember about volunteering once a year, on the 5th of December, and then we move on. What a mistake we are committing.
Our most pressing challenges can only be won with strong, massive and effective state interventions and with a private sector that is not only after the so-called "bottom line". But volunteering can play an important, complimentary role when both the state and the corporates are unable or unwilling to fulfill their true and holistic mandates: helping societies around the world to prosper inclusively.
Without any help from the government, it is up to each of us to find our own way to champion volunteerism. People might not imagine it, but making volunteerism a central pillar of their lives will be tremendously powerful, rewarding and literally transformative.
