Criticisms of Volunteerism
One of the biggest volunteer opportunities in my life has been going to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania annually to service with little children in low-income families. I always thought that I was doing a good thing. How could anything bad come out of serving children who were in need of service? Every year we would grow connections to these kids, give them gifts like school supplies and bikes, and spend quality time with them. I believed we were helping them and making a difference, in fact I felt pride in the fact that we were helping them. However, soon I realized that we may not have been doing as much good as I always thought that we were. I began to think about the part where we had to leave them at the end of every week. They would beg us not to leave and chase after our van as we drove down the street. But no matter what, we only had one week per year to spend with them. And then when we visited again next year, sometimes they ones who we grew very close with never came back and I would always wonder why. But now, I think that maybe it’s because we left at the end of every week each summer and never connected with them again. Or maybe it’s because we walked into the lives of kids who saw death every day in their life and showed them love and then took it away. This began to discourage me from going to these weeklong summer missions. It wasn’t until I came to college and joined SERVE that I began to realize that these “criticisms of volunteering” were relevant to almost every service activity. When we would discuss different types of these “criticisms”, I began to make a list of my own in order for me to be able to avoid such things in any future service activities. The first thing that went on my list was making sure you go for the right reasons. An argument we had in class was, does it even matter if you go with the right intention if the job of the volunteering is getting done? Well, I believe that when people go for the right reasons, not only will the job get just ‘done’ but it will be done well and with sincerity. There will be effort and extra levels of care that go into completing the task, which in the end really affect the outcome of the project. It is always better to have people who have a heart and passion for the service that they are providing complete the task rather than someone who is there for the wrong reasons. The second thing on the list was to make sure the volunteering that we do, especially international service, is never volunteerism. Meaning that the volunteering we do becomes distracted due to the group’s desire to be a tourist of the new foreign land that they are in. Such things can bring people to jump to false conclusions to the people in the country or can even bring danger to the lives of those who are actually in need in the country. Volunteerism, in a sense, can be seen as volunteering gone wrong; it’s when people who are supposed to be selfless in the act of helping others becomes selfish and thus begin to want to serve themselves. The third thing on my list is creating connections that count. When I realized how much I was impacting kids’ lives during my weeklong missions in Pittsburgh, I was happy that I was able to make a difference in their lives. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized it wasn’t the relationship that I built with them during that one week that mattered but rather the relationship that I continued to cure and flourish throughout their lives that counts. If I wanted to become a role model and positive influence in their lives, I needed to show my love for them past that one week and let them know that someone is always thinking of them and praying for them all the days of their lives. The fourth and last thing is to always make sure to thoroughly research and prepare for service events. When volunteering is approached hastily, damage can be done to the community rather than help the community. We would never want to hurt a group of people because we were not prepared or not fully equipped. Now, although all of these points may make volunteering sound bad, I’m not saying that people should not volunteer. I believe that volunteering is a very good and blessed thing and something that everyone should be involved in! However, such cautions must be taken in order for us to be able to provide good, positive, and life-changing service.