“Volunteers”, is not just a word, but has a deep meaning attached to it.

“Volunteers”, is not just a word, but has a deep meaning attached to it. Volunteerism is voluntarily, and not by force or expectation. What we fail to understand, was taught to us, and henceforth, we promised to practice it.

iVolunteer organized a great experience and an awesome informative session on Volunteer Management. Volunteers are an integral part of our organization and it is important to make them feel special. In my belief, Volunteers are a supporting hand, and that they keep the organization intact and running. Having worked with volunteers before, I have always faced the problem of attrition and have always questioned as to why don’t they retain. Taking a volunteer for an event is not as difficult as giving them the quality experience. And that quality experience for them can come from meeting their expectations and by giving them the feel of the culture of the organization. Volunteers should never be taken lightly. They bring in their skills, talent and give us their time and energy, without we investing much into them. They come up with a self motivation and enthusiasm which becomes a liability for us to check into and an asset for us to reserve.

At the GYAN session, most of our beliefs and ideas of how a volunteer should be looked upon or looked into came into practice. Prarthana initiated and took forward the activities and case studies so that we could better understand the idea of volunteerism, and also so that we could eliminate the issues within the organization which demotivates volunteers.

The 2 case studies were very different from each other but depicted the similar situation. With the case studies and activities, we came to discover and learn the whole process of “THE JOURNEY OF A VOLUNTEER” which involved major steps like assigning them properly defined task and mentoring them for the same. At the  session, we also answered to the 5W1H ( Why, what, who, when, where and how) about volunteerism on individual levels, and discussed them as a group. At the sessions, we also role-played for volunteer recruitment and good and bad volunteer interview, which widened our horizon in the volunteer placement paradigm. We also discussed and formulated a few points on Volunteer Policy, which is important and which gives a lot of confidence to the volunteers while they associate themselves with an organization. We also discussed how important Volunteer Induction is for them.

As a whole, GYAN session kept up to its name and gave me a good and enriching experience of a lifetime 🙂