It’s not easy being Prem Kumar Dasari. As manager of an IT firm, he works 12-hours, five days a week. Weekends are the only respite he gets from having to stare at a screen, his only time to catch up on sleep and spend time with friends and family. And yet, for about six hours every Saturday and Sunday, Dasari goes to Kannagi Nagar, on the outskirts of Chennai to spend time with the children there, talk them into not dropping out of school, find out about problems they face, and do his best to make their lives better.
“Earlier I used to go there only on weekends. Now, I visit even in the mornings I’m free and evenings when I get off early,” says Dasari, who volunteers for Child Rights and You (CRY). Pride dripping from his voice, he says, “We’ve managed to get four dropouts back to school.” A member of the Chennai Trekking Club, the 27-year-old has even talked his friends into volunteering.
Dasari is one of a growing breed of professionals who work hard, and volunteer even harder, spending their free time in anganwadis to check on the quality of food, meeting government officials to get teachers appointed in vacant posts, cataloguing, entering data, writing exams for disabled children, or even simply spending time with the mentally ill—anything that is useful to a non governmental organisation (NGO) working in such fields.
Slowly but surely, Dasari and his contemporaries from different professional fields—as well as homemakers, elderly retired folks and young students—are changing the face of vounteering across India. According to eminent sociologist Shiv Viswanathan, it used to be membership of Rotary and Lions Clubs which gave people “both status in the community, as well as the feeling they were doing good work”. The motives might have remained the same even today, but from those institutions, volunteering has spilled over into almost every organisation, both political and apolitical. “There is the NGO-kind of volunteering. Then there’s political volunteering which, in India, has diminished with the rise of NGO-volunteering,” he adds. Mostly faceless and behind the scenes, volunteers are nowadays essential to the success of an NGO.
It is not always easy to find and hold on to dedicated volunteers— a group sorely needed by NGOs to help. It’s a field where there are no funds to hire a full-time employee, or where particular skills are needed but hard to find.
As Prarthna Unkalkar Kaul, head (South and East) of iVolunteer, an organisation specialising in bringing volunteers and NGOs together, put it, “The concept of volunteering is not familiar to Indians. So, even about five years ago, it was difficult to find many. Now that’s changing. Awareness has increased, and more people from different walks of life want to give us their time,” she said.
iVolunteer co-ordinates some 10,000 volunteers across India.
When G S Venkatraman’s wife died in 1998, it left him determined to do something for other sufferers. The storage inspector, who worked for a Union government enterprise, retired in 2000 and found he had a lot of time on his hands. “Both my daughters were married and settled abroad. I was used to working from 10 am to 8 pm. So I began volunteering,” he said. At first Venkatraman volunteered for CRY, doing some clerical work, fundraising and entertaining children. But his urge to do something for ill patients remained unabated. So he began volunteering at the Cancer Institute, Adyar, as well as Vasantha Memorial Cancer Centre. “I wrote letters to donors and did the follow-up with patients to check on their health. I’m also involved in the anti-tobacco campaign,” he said. The 71-year-old spends practically all day with his various volunteering activities.
These days, organisations rely heavily on senior citizens to bear the brunt of the volunteer work. Some years ago, most retired people would have been involved with their families. That is no longer the case now, with many whose children emigrate elsewhere. Thus, physically active senior citizens who are used to working long hours, turn to volunteering. “It’s great for us, really,” said Michelle Baxter, assistant manager (volunteer action) at CRY. “Since they are free in the mornings—a time of day professionals can’t give us—they can coordinate with government officials and do official work that can be done only during weekdays,” she said.
It’s not easy being a volunteer. The hours often clash with work, meetings get in the way, events collide with planned trips and there are no more lazy Sunday afternoons. It’s easy to motivate yourself in the beginning when the cause is fresh and disappointments unknown. Sustaining the passion however, takes work—a reason why NGOs find it easy to get volunteers, but difficult to retain them.
But do we, as a country, make it easy for our working citizens to volunteer? Vaishnavi Jayakumar, co-founder of The Banyan, an NGO for mentally ill women, doesn’t think so. “It should be possible for a professional to request her employers to adjust her work hours so that she gets time to volunteer. Productivity and output would remain the same. But while this is easy to fix abroad, it’s not so simple in India. The culture of giving back is yet to arrive,” she says.
Many however, claim our systems are changing. “Lots of firms have corporate social responsibilty programmes that get employees involved in charitable work. Schools and colleges too, make it compulsory for students to volunteer,” said Prarthna. But, she admits, “Doing something of your own will, not because it’s thurst upon you, and not expecting anything in return, is what makes a good volunteer.”
