Voluntarily Yours!!

As we move into the new age, colleges and institutions are becoming more and more focussed towards working for social causes. Students studying various courses are now using a part of their spare time to help the under privileged. While most B-school students focus on using their newly acquired (or otherwise) marketing skills, financial acumen or entrepreneurship skills to provide a better means of livelihood to various people, like HIV\AIDS affected women, local artists of remote villages, and various others; students from other courses help the society in other ways, like organising blood donation camps, de-worming programmes at various slums, etc.
But few students volunteer at certain places – like suicide prevention help lines, old-age homes, adoption centres, teaching slum kids, etc. These programmes usually involve providing emotional support and other means of guidance to the under – privileged. They are like vocations – they need training, certain amount of natural skills like patience, kindness and devotion, and most of all, they need dedication. Students may not always join for the right reasons – such students may eventually drop out of these programmes.
These programmes can only be truly successful if the volunteers perform the activities with a true heart and an unselfish mind. These activities won’t be successful if people treat them like just another job that needs to be done for gaining some personal benefit. Successful programmes are those whose volunteers are passionate about the cause, and give the cause a top priority over other personal activities. People who join due to selfish reasons – like getting a certificate to make their CV look better – eventually lose interest and leave the programme. But in doing so, they break their commitment to the people who needed their help and who did not deserve to be abandoned again.
So before you volunteer, make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons. Sometimes, volunteering helps you find qualities in yourself that you did not know you had – like ability to understand people, or selflessness. These programmes - when done unselfishly, without expecting anything in return - give you joys which even a bank job in the US will never be able to provide. They give you a sense of inner peace and belonging. Sometimes, the images which we will have to deal with may be pretty disturbing. Sometimes, we may have to forego the things which we dearly love – like movies with friends, picnics, parties, etc and make compromises. But your heart feels cleansed and light – which makes it all worth it. They say, God is in all our hearts, we need to accept and feel his presence. No wonder then, these programmes make you feel this way – Because, after all, serving people is the best way to serve god.