I Stopped Treating Volunteering as a Way To Get a New Experience and So Should You
How my experience in charity has changed the way I look at charity today
Even if you have never consciously engaged in charity, you were most likely still a part of some charity project anyway. In today’s world — at least in its prosperous parts — it is almost impossible to stay away from charity. Most often it is, of course, donations. It doesn’t matter if you donate regularly or ad hoc, giving in to emotions, responding to some unfavorable event, an article read or a documentary watched. You have donated to charity at least once. Donating to charity regularly for many of us is already part of the culture.
Despite the fact that the importance of regular donations cannot be overestimated — because, for the most part, it is this money that gives life to charitable projects — of course, volunteer work is valued much higher in the eyes of the public. At least because it requires you to give your most important resource: time, as well as emotional involvement.
My volunteer work was a rather spontaneous decision — and I learned my lessons from it too — and it happened almost ten years ago. I am sure that during this time there have been significant changes in many charitable structures. Still, I think it is important to share the experience that I have gained. I will be glad to know that what surprised me negatively gradually changes (and it is so), and to express a little personal opinion about that year which I spent on volunteer work.
How it all started for me and how volunteering turned out to be a full-time job…
It was not the easiest couple of years for me, and I felt burned out: I needed a better climate, more welcoming people than the office workers around me, and new impressions. So I took a trip to India with friends and decided to stay longer.
But I did not want to sit idle for a long time: in the end, it was just boring. Besides, for the first time in my life I wanted to do something different from my office work, and as it seemed to me then, would bring a really tangible impact on the world around me. And since volunteering seemed to me to be the most obvious way to influence the world around me, I started looking.
Despite the fact that I was determined, there were still things that I was worried about. Like, what should I do if I don’t have any experience of volunteer work at all? And in general, work in charity? As a professional, I never liked to approach new tasks unprepared and not sure that I could be productive and useful 100%.
So first I decided to look for something in the field that would be more familiar to me, something where I could use the skills that I already had. I entered a query into Google and found ReliefWeb: a service provided by the OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).
I became the Data Management Officer in the UNESCO New Delhi office — full time and paid. This is certainly not what you expect to hear in the story about volunteer work, but it is one of the important lessons I have learned: you can build a career in charity and earn a living at the same time. The second lesson was equally important: working in charity is not always exciting, it is tough hard work. Sometimes it is the same office job as any other, and it is a job that has to be done in order for the system to function smoothly. So my advice to all of those who think that their office skills are useless in charity: you are mistaken, they can be extremely useful, so don’t be afraid to look for suitable vacancies if you want to try yourself in this area.
… and how it turned out to be not what I expected
After about half a year in the New Delhi office, I realized that even though I liked working for UNESCO, it wasn’t exactly what I originally wanted when I thought about charity and volunteer work. I got my first experience and decided that this time I just need to do everything as before: to understand what other skills I already have and how they can be used for good. And it was, as time has shown, both the right and wrong decision.
I found a suitable opportunity for me at the Street Child organization, worldwide known as an organization that helps children from the streets to get an education. It really became an unpredictable experience for me. I had a degree in economics and experience in international markets. “Great,” I decided, “I think I know enough math and English to pass on my knowledge to someone else”. And I jumped back into this new job.
To be honest, it was one of the most exciting, but still one of the most sobering experiences of my life. The first thing I understood when I started was that I was not prepared as well as I would like to be. Of course not because I didn’t know enough about mathematics or English. But what I certainly wasn’t ready for was how much emotional work you have to do when you’re doing something like teaching kids, and not just kids, but kids with a complicated background. You often have no idea what they went through or have to go through right now, and for the little time that you spend with them, you cannot help everyone.
This is the of anyone who faces volunteer work in the field, but it was an important lesson for me: you have to learn not to succumb to emotions because otherwise, you can’t do your job — and therefore, you can not really help. In the work of a volunteer, you as in no other field should be able to set personal boundaries.
I was a volunteer for another half a year. And all this time I was torn between two contradictory feelings: on the one hand, I finally felt that I was changing the world around me, on the other hand, it constantly seemed to me that I lacked experience and competent leadership to make my help as effectively as possible.
How this experience has changed my view of volunteering
Later, when I finished volunteering and left India, I put off thinking about my experience for a long time, although I talked to people who had also volunteered in the past or were going to volunteer in the future for organizations like Street Children. For the most part, they were people like me — people with a good job and income, who lacked new experience in life. For a long time, I couldn’t understand what made me uncomfortable when they talked about volunteer work as an “interesting experience”.
Finally, I understood: the approach to volunteer work as just another opportunity to spend a vacation really pushed me away.
Of course, often any help is already a good help because the other just does not exist. However, it is obvious that a person who treats volunteering not as an opportunity to get an exotic experience but as a full-fledged worker will bring more benefits than an untrained one who suddenly decides to change the world. This is especially evident when your help is aimed at people.
You need preparation for working with people — including emotional preparation, you need a supportive community that can give you advice and teaches you how to deal with difficult situations. And, of course, you need a well-defined organization to do this.
So what is the main lesson I learned from this annual experience? I learned about myself that despite my initial doubts, my experience and knowledge can be useful and change someone’s life. And the most important thing I have learned about charity: the more time, effort, and training organizations invest in their volunteers, the better the system works. My personal vision of this problem is that now it seems to me that charity is the area where the number of paid jobs should grow for the system to bring better results.
This experience has definitely changed the way I donate money to charity, and what do I pay attention to when I choose foundations: what percentage of this money goes to workers’ salaries and whether the foundation prepares its volunteers for the fieldwork, does it hire people for this work for paid places or is it limited to recruiting volunteers?
These were definitely lessons worth learning for yourself, and this is really an experience that changes the way you look at the world. And it is definitely an experience that I was grateful to get.
I like that work in the field of charity is gradually changing structurally, and the problems that I faced ten years ago are gradually becoming a thing of the past. In the end, this is a topic that concerns me now, and I would be glad if you could share your opinion about it and your experience with me. After all, who, if not us, has to change the world for the better?
