The value of volunteering is not in the science but in the art of being human

05/12/2011 00:01:00

I write this after spending a long time thinking about “The value of volunteering”. 

I would like to start with my grandfather - a man whose story telling abilities has inspired me over the years to tell stories to others as a means to passing on difficult messages of change and transformation. I remember going to the village during the planting season and also during the harvesting time.  It was tough going during those times because it was hard work and each individual had their chaos to do in the fields and at home. I remember carrying bags of fertiliser and having to spread the fertiliser in the field in my portion of the field. So I also remember having to wake up at 4.00 in the morning to go and do this so that we could be finished by lunch time. So you can imagine that it was hard work and not something that you would want to do often. 

I am telling you this so that you can understand why when he then asked us to go and do the same thing for other people, I raised my voice to protest against this. As a story teller, he took that as an opportunity to tell not just me but my cousins who were present, why we had to go out and help with the planting in other people’s fields.  He talked about ‘nherera ne shirikadzi’, the Shona phrase for orphans and widows.

We were taught that in every village, there was need to identify and know the widows and the orphans because they needed help and support in order to live a life of dignity. Every planting season and every harvesting season, a day or two would be set aside in the village. On those days, villagers would come together from their homes, they would bring food and drink and they would spend the whole day working in the fields of the widows and the orphans. This, my grandfather said, was a symbol of ubuntu. This would be done, because by supporting and helping out in solidarity with others, each person gained a little more respect for themselves and  moved bit more towards being a human being.

Ubuntu

This ubuntu is where I would like to develop my case for the value of volunteering:

Ubuntu has been described as a philosophy of life, which in its most fundamental sense represents personhood, humanity, humaneness and morality; a metaphor that describes group solidarity where such group solidarity is central to the survival of communities with a scarcity of resources, where the fundamental belief is that a person can only be a person through others .

In other words the individual's whole existence is relative to that of the group: this is manifested in anti-individualistic conduct towards the survival of the group if the individual is to survive. It is a basically humanistic orientation towards fellow beings. It is not enough to refer to the meaning and profound concept of ubuntuism merely as a social ideology: we prefer to call it the potential of being human.

Volunteerism safeguards our existence

The meaning of the concept becomes much clearer when its social value is highlighted - group solidarity, conformity, compassion, respect, human dignity, humanistic orientation and collective unity have, among others been defined as key social values of ubuntu. Thus its value has also been viewed as a basis for a morality of co-operation, compassion, communalism and concern for the interests of the collective respect for the dignity of personhood, all the time emphasising the virtues of that dignity in social relationships and practices. 

My argument is that this concept of ubuntu is a concept that is found in all societies globally. It might be called by different names, but it has been there. Every so often, it comes to the fore when our very humanity is threatened; people will put aside their differences, look for the strengths between themselves and stand in the gap of each other’s weaknesses to safe guard our existence as a species. I believe that inherent in the concept of ubuntu is what we have tried to capture as volunteerism. 

Building a better world 

As the cross fertilisation of ideas, values and practices has spread through globalisation and other forms of global interaction, the needs of different societies and communities have also evolved.  And as we learn more about what can be achieved through volunteering we move closer to the realisation that what we are trying to do through volunteering is to rediscover our own humaneness.

We need to look at volunteering as a movement. We are building a movement of people who are interested in learning from each other, giving of themselves to build a better world of dignity. 

The value of volunteering in is not in the science but in the art of being human.