Volunteering

How does it works?

Why do people volunteer? They are in it not because of the money. To help? yes. But it is one of the reason they would volunteer. But what really matters? The desire to learn from the pro? Yes maybe. But when you are volunteering in a big organisation, what are the chances you will be selected or you will be groom by the pro (the head icon of the organisation).

Learning is one of the main reason why youth today volunteer. Volunteering is more or less like an internship. Most apply for the big 4 (top four companies) in audit, they are KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PWC. How about other sectors? Im sure there are big four in each sectors. The bigger, the better.

Even though they volunteer in big companies such as the audit big four – they know that they will learn a lot of things there. Its not for the money. Its politics. Knowing people, how system works, managing people and most important networking. Is networking is just another word for cronyism?

…refers to the favourable treatment of friends and associates in the distribution of resources and positions, regardless of their …

…Connecting with people of like interests for the purpose of uncovering opportunities, identifying landmines and learning of best practices…

When you look at both of the definition, they all come together. Cronyism = Networking and Networking will lead to cronyism? Well when you think that back again. What is wrong and what is right you can never know. Everyone needs to get something out of anything even though they are not related during that process.

Volunteering again is another way to gain good role model. But most of their mentors can be at a very young age. Fresh mentors. People that just recieved power to comment and command. Just like everybody else. We all like to comment and command others because it shows power. Such role model can give negative impact towards the people of the future. A distorted view about the real work. Negative feedbacks in their mind about being abused. Treated as slave, all sorts of things. The organisation needs to remember. They are not in it for the money. They are here to learn. Since birth. We were thought to be positive and we were trained to be anti-negative. Just read your history text book. Big chapter on democracy, another huge chapter about the world war II. But at the end of the day, the word anti- is a negation. When too much anti- (too much don’ts) it can also corrupt our learning process because the nature of living is continous and we learn new things most of the time. Look  at the world today. Too many anti’s slogan. Anti-Corruption, anti-drugs, anti-war and many other things. Governments and other commissions had fought corruption and drugs as long as they exist. Was it a success? Look at colombia, land of cokes. If they really want to clean their mess up, they can send the whole army to clean it up. Yet there was a joint venture between the US army with the Colombian army during the flushing process. 2004 they said to the BBC that thier campaign is failing. Just look at the head line – “US anti-drug campaign failing”.

So how? Education is the solution. Teaching, mentoring. the needs of good spirit. Students/ Volunteers/ Interns need to venture the sector as deep as they could do. Building up interest is important. Everyone can do what they want in this world. The can be a business person, they can be a teacher, they can be the people of the law, they can be a writer, they can be a vicar and even the pope. How about do they become what they really want? Of course you cannot be the Chief of Police the day you start joining the force. There are process. Like every other jobs. Many of the youth today are eager to be rich. Its not a bad thing at all. Patient is what they need. Most think that after secondary school they are big enough to handle the world of the future. But they need to remember that education is not only the one provided by the government. That is only the basics of learning. For me University is not as hard as I could imagine. It is hard, but at the end of my time at university, I think that university taught me to learn without supervision, learn what you want, learn how to think and be or act busy all the time by doing something. Yes act busy. You will learn new things I am sure you will no matter what you do. So those who stop learning are no different from people on coma. Heart still pumping but they cannot do anything.

So educating volunteers are important. They are there to learn, learn and learn. The organisation on the other hand, the organisation need to have a good system of teaching. Every organisation is a school, a mosque, a church, a temple, the CIA and all of the organisation that exist. Even a family is a school. With good education system, people in the organisation will be happy. From the bottom to the top. People will last longer when the sense of belonging is so strong. Just look at the origin of the word. “Voulu” in french its a past composition which means wanted. The verb is “vouloir” which means - to want. We can see from there who is aftering who. The aftering side needs to make a world class proposal to the volunteers.

To make people of the the future to volunteer more. They need to encourage people why they should volunteer. Unless you are one of the big four. People will come to you unannounced.

 Moral Of the story

I hope that more and more companies here in Malaysia will start to offer volunteer programs to young people. Not only to university students. Yet the should even consider post-pmr or post-spm students. Interest is hard to plant. When I ask young people here in my area. Most would like to become doctors, engineers, architects and many other so-called high paid income. It is not that it is wrong to be that. The process of reaching an ambition is hard. It may be a good thing to have an ambition because it could motivate someone to achieve something. Yet ambition can also lead to be a huge demotivator among young family. Many, especially post PMR students, if they did not achieve the right results, they would not be able to continue their dream to be engineers, doctors, mathematician, and many other science related subjects because they were unable to go to pure science classes. Many saw that as a huge heartbreaker. Nurturing the philosophy of volunteerism towards young people to work at a young age could open up their mind about how things work and give them more options for the future. Apart from building up networks, they also need a person to look up to. Now in Malaysia, the only idol might be our own astronout. We need more people for a young person to look up to. You don’t have to be famous. All you need is to know how to inspire.