Daily Times

The international community is celebrating International Volunteer Day today (Wednesday) to pay tribute to millions of volunteers worldwide who, driven by their inborn craving, care and love for humanity, risk their own life to reach out to those in distress.

The United Nations designated the International Volunteer Day in 1985 to celebrate the power and potential of volunteerism and to stimulate and motivate people to register themselves as volunteers for serving the humanity at home and abroad to the best of their capability.

Volunteers are the venturesome superheroes and altruists who not only volunteer their precious time risk and skills, but also risk their own life and to help out those needing help.

In our daily life we can see them working tirelessly to help, to support and to succor the most vulnerable people, being the first to reach the scene when some natural, man-made disaster or emergency situation hits, conducting health campaigns, assisting the traffic police in regulating traffic, operating ambulances, planting trees, cleaning public places of garbage, participating in walks and campaigns to raise awareness about different important issues, taking care of internally displaced people and refugees, educating children, donating blood, organizing free medical camps, and uniting people with their families lost during emergency situations to name but few.

Though majority of them serve in their own countries, some volunteer to serve the suffering humanity in countries facing international conflicts and wars.

Their passion to serve and help out the suffering humanity is so overpowering that they don’t take peculiar financial gains and limelight into consideration.

Religious, cultural, lingual and parochial barriers stand just nowhere in their path. Filled with the milk of human kindness, they feel the fellow human beings’ pain and suffering like their own and taking rest or pausing for even a moment to breath fresh air is the least priority for them unless they finish their job.

They come from all backgrounds from a poor person to millionaires and billionaires and from businessmen to successful politicians.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, also had to his credit of setting up the very first volunteer fire department that played role in many fires in Philadelphia.

Florence Nightingale referred to as the mother of modern nursing, cared for the wounded in the Crimean War.

English writer Agatha Christie, known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, volunteered as a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross Hospital in Torquay from 1914 to 1917 when her husband Archie was fighting in World War-I.

Actress Audrey Hepburn, best known for some of the most iconic movies of all time, was a volunteer nurse during World War-II in a Dutch hospital. In 1954, she began contributing to the UNICEF donating all the salaries she earned from her final movies. She became a goodwill ambassador and consistently made a number of field trips around the world to help children in need.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, a Catholic nun, spent most of her life in India caring for those suffering from HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis.

In recent times, Hollywood celebrities such as Angelina Jolie have visited various impoverished countries of the world in an attempt to understand the problems of those living there and find ways to help them.

Jolie has provided volunteer service in more than 20 countries, including Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Cambodia, and Ecuador.

The Jolie-Pitt Foundation is dedicated to helping extreme rural poverty, protecting natural resources and conserving wildlife. The foundation has also contributed $1 million to Doctors Without Borders. This is only a handful of things on the lengthy list that details Jolie’s numerous volunteer contributions. In 2006, she even donated more than $8 million to various charities.

Hilary Swank – famous star of Million Dollar Baby – spent time volunteering in India with the United Planet. She volunteered her time working with children in an orphanage in Palampur, a village in Northern India.

Since the designation of the International Day of Volunteer in 1985, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies made up from 191 individual national societies have been celebrating the day in a befitting manner by organizing marches, walks, seminars, workshops and holding poster competitions and declamation contests.

Being one of the National Societies and the leading humanitarian society in Pakistan, the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) too celebrates the Day by holding different events to highlight the sacrifices of volunteers and to motivate the society to follow in their footsteps.

It has established youth clubs in different institutions where they conduct youth related programs. Its Youth and Volunteer Department also trains volunteers for the National Disaster Response Teams (NDRTs), Emergency Response Teams (ERTs), Branch Disaster Response Teams (BDRTs) & District Disaster Response Teams (DDRTs) in all districts to strengthen the disaster response capacities.

Currently, the PRCS has a base of thousands of trained volunteers countrywide and it is firing on all cylinders and sparing no effort to take this volunteer base to 5 million. It is part of the Red Cross Red Crescent RC/RC Movement having over 11.6 million volunteers worldwide.

Youths are the major focus of the current PTI-led government and one of its major planks to effect the real change that it has promised to the nation. The PRCS needs the government’s support and patronage to institute a Red Crescent Corps that can help it bring out the promised change.

The writer is Secretary General of Pakistan Red Crescent Society

Published in Daily Times, December 5^th 2018.