Volunteering as a World Changing Project

Education of young people is very important, they are the one who can change things in future. But words are not enough. Solution could be laid in volunteering programs. Only by seeing the problem, being part of it, and feeling it, people can truly change. We can say to people “do” and “don’t” but we can’t force them to act like that.

Being a long term volunteer in Eco-centre, made me realize how people can change. They realized they should take care of nature, save the water, respect other people, people learned to live with other people in peace etc. They didn’t know that when they came, but they left as totally different person, aware of need for sustainable development.

There should be an organization connected with all the other organizations that need volunteers.  There should be a total reform in education, and it is needed to make volunteering obligatory in schools, at least once a week. School could contact the Organization that would provide school with needed information. The Organization should be sponsored by town, country, or other sponsors. Volunteers work should not be only involved with nature, but also work for society, people in need and all kinds of volunteering. Young people should learn from the beginning to feel the world around them, to touch it. The Organization should also educate young people before sending them to the projects, so they could understand what are they doing and why are they doing it. Definitely, the biggest project of the Organization should be a one week volunteering project, where volunteers would be in a group with other people they don’t know. Every person should pass through it. That kind of a project should definitely be in nature, so the volunteers could try once in a life to live without all the things they usually have and think they need, to develop tolerance and  sense for nature. Of course, their stay should also be pleasant, educational and they should work on something that can open their eyes, show them connection between everything: nature, people, world. A big importance in that kind of a project would be dealing with people.

The reason why people exploit everything without thinking, the reasons for growing greed and human stupidity lies in unconscious mind. We’re getting more and more separated from the true sense of being, of living. We’re bored and unsatisfied, even we believe we’re happy. We’re loosing ourselves in “having” and we consider it as only pleasure. I would just call it oblivion. Primitive people didn’t have need to think about sustainability, they didn’t live in oblivion. Nowadays world is teaching us to live and “to be” for totally wrong reasons. This is why I think that volunteering in other projects, not only in nature projects, should help. It would help people to connect with themselves by feeling other people, helping other people, helping society. They would realize the good feeling it gives them, and understand they don’t need to exploit everything to be worth, the would realize how connected we all are. That kind of a project, combined with the other projects would create a human – a human by all sense of meaning of the word.

Acting this way maybe would not make any changes in one month, one year, five years. But it long terms, it would make people – human beings. New generations would be more conscious of the world around them, and I believe, the world would be better. All big things didn’t come over night.