Why volunteering rocks!

Every now and then a thought crosses my mind – a few years down the line, will we be able to continue providing all these voluntary (free) services?

This thought bothers me especially when it comes to the free clinic we run and all the other health programs run through Doctors for Seva.

It is not because I’m concerned about how we will sustain ourselves; in the 2 years that I’ve been doing this work, I’ve realized that every sincere work will somehow find support, even if it means a bit of an initial struggle.

My concern arises when I look around and find that there’s hardly any NGO or charitable organization or charitable hospital which has been around for long and continues to provide voluntary service. Most of them charge a user fee – an amount so small that it hardly contributes to sustaining the work they do. Yet they all insist on it.

I’ve really wondered what the reason for this could be……Could it be because we want patients to “value” what they get and not take us for granted? Could it be simply because the whole process becomes much easier when you introduce money? Could it be because somewhere we are concerned about being looked at as foolish for giving away something as important as healthcare for free, and not getting anything measurable in return?

I don’t really know the reason.

But somehow I have the belief that there might be a better way of answering all these questions and still providing voluntary service.........because it makes sense.

So then……how about asking someone who has been on the receiving end of our service to do the same for someone else instead of paying us for it? The concept of “paying it forward” or in other words the beneficiary becoming the benefactor. Nothing new really, but still it raises doubts unless we’ve tried it out consciously.

That’s when I spoke to Bhavani who manages our free clinic, and she immediately told me about Gangadhar, who we had helped with an open heart surgery, and he’s been constantly asking her to give him some opportunity to volunteer!

Today morning, Gangadhar, equipped with a letter from our clinic, volunteered to take a new patient to Jayadeva. He was with the patient all through and helped get things done. He knew how to do all this because we had done this for him when he needed his surgery.

And, he’s not the only one. Other patients who we’d got surgeries done for have also come forward to volunteer. Patient Kalpana’s husband is an auto driver and volunteered to ferry patients around when needed. Patient Muniraju volunteered to donate blood for another patient at Jayadeva, and went on to donate blood for many others since we’ve done that for him. And of course, our very first patient, Charles, who we’ve helped with a brain tumour surgery, sponsored another patient’s surgery expenses. I’m sure there must be more such cases happening all around us which we are unaware of.

What if we consciously decided to make this a part of our working process? What if we offered every patient who we helped the opportunity to become a YFS volunteer and help others? Wouldn’t it be a great way of generating dedicated and sincere volunteers from within? Can we attempt to run our entire process through this concept?

Keeping in mind that this does not apply to children who we help or severely ailing patients, we should make an attempt to include this process as part of our other services. Yes, it’ll be a bit of an effort since the ‘transaction’ doesn’t end on the spot. But that’s the beauty of it. Where money successfully closes a chapter, this concept of volunteering could open up a wonderful chain of positive actions.

I do believe that there is something so beautiful about volunteering that nothing can replace. Volunteering truly rocks! J