What will be the future role of volunteering?

Westerners are obsessed both by the world of the virtual cloud of communication and also by the bubble in which we have settled, threatened by the fears towards the god of markets who, omnipresent and random, can lead us into misery or to death. Bearing this in mind, the Arab Spring and the worldwide movement of the outraged open the door for hope. While the cloud impels us like a siren’s chant to remain at distance, these new movements push us to go out and take over the street. We found ourselves caught between virtual absence and the human touch. What will the role of volunteering be in the years to come?

Volunteering will have to be commitment for people and our environment. It will have to push us to doing voluntary actions that pull us down from the cloud and make us enter reality. In order to reach this, we need to start with changing ourselves, living the values we defend and proposing them socially. Volunteering must stop being passive and instead totally strive for the new cause.

Society is shifting from being complex to being confusing. Our voluntary actions can’t remain being just little assistance therapies or targeted at improving the environment. The social change that volunteering promotes can only work upon the transformation of those structures that generate marginalisation, exclusion and destruction of ecosystems. And this is why it is necessary to diagnose strictly and to launch projects for a new social structure. To content oneself with just cyclical improvement just slows down the process of change.

Volunteering will have to imply presence. Egalitarian human interaction lies at its base, amongst people living in difficult circumstances, no matter whether these are structural or cyclical ones. Contact out of the reality of a relationship and in full respect for the opportunities and energies hidden in your next one, allowing us to grow authonomy and the capacity each and everyone of us has to change our environment. That is challenging: that voluntary action may be done on an egalitarian basis.

In the confusion of today’s world, volunteering can be a tool for transformation or an obstacle. Which option do we choose?

Return to the main page