Can I be a volunteer ?

One common thought in any new volunteer's mind would be : "Will I, if at all I can, be able to find time to devote for this 'RTI thingy' ?". Do not worry folks, you are not alone for I am sure every one there in YTF must have gone through this routine atleast once. I, for one can tell you that I find myself thinking along same lines every alternate week. Juggling your weekend activities like lazing out Sundays, meeting friends, dance, movies, sports (& for some work as well) seems to be a big deal enough. Add to that the fact that there are someone in your home called parents who hope every week to see their bright little (in their eyes ofcourse) kid inside home than out.

Transparent governance, society upliftment are very great causes but alas, very poor motivators for they are very lofty subjects. In starting, when your actions dont seem to have direct consequences, you cannot motivate yourself by saying "I am going to do this much extra today for my society". "Today I am going to spend 2 hours for a better governance." On the other hand thoughts like "I have a movie to watch today" "Hey, how about chilling out this evening with a couple of friends" seem to offer much better alternatives. That brings us to square one. How to motivate oneself in view of so many distractions & how to maintain consistency in continually generating output towards YTF.

So, what to do ? Being a strong believer in taking the choices rather than letting the choices choose you, I have always felt it is a question more of how much do you want to contribute rather than being able to adjust YTF in one's daily timetable. To take an example outisde YTF, I have known people who have kept on contributing to such causes even while staying abroad & pursuing research full-time. On the other hand, a person without drive might find several excuses for not being able to handle that bit of extra effort, ever complaining of lack of time, prior commitments or resources. So, it seems "drive" is THE first & foremost ingrdient in the recipe of making a motivated volunteer. No matter what might be your motivations, be it society or self-recognition, as long as you have that drive, you can sustain yourself. This is the key difference between regular volunteers & the 'also-sats' (a term to identify people who also sat during a certain meeting). Alas, the drive has to come either from within or by means of an inspiration. You cannot purchase it, nor feed it in your brain by regularly appearing in meetings.

A smart reader might be able to spot that I am yet to answer the original question with which I started this post. How does a volunteer find time for volunteering & thus judge if time is ripe to join a cause ? My emphasis on drive in earlier para was just to do that - to emphasise upon motivation as necessary means for sustaining yourself through. Clearly, before you start finding time for YTF, you need to make sure that you do feel like sparing some time off your schedule or else the whole exercise is just going to be a waste of time. Once the 'drive' part is taken care of, one can start addressing the real question properly.

Before proceeding, let us try to understand who is a volunteer. An important difference between a worker & a volunteer is not just the fact that one is paid & other is not. The difference goes much deeper than that & you are going to smile if I mention about 'drive' again here. So I wont. Instead I will put the difference between the two in terms of their work pattern. A worker is bound to deliver only during allotted time & all other time for a worker is time to enjoy. On the other hand, a volunteer is not limited by any such time slots. The concept of volunteerism cuts across any rigid timelines & raises it to the very art of living. One has to understand that volunteerism is not a weekly/monthly/bimonthly affair. It is a process which is going to stay forever. There is no end to one's contributions & one can end up working full-time & still feel like not having delivered enough. Each volunteer needs to accept this fact & always keep it in mind that as a volunteer, one's goal should always lie in utilising the available time in best possible manner. The quantum of contribution is not that important as long as the quality level is kept high. Similarly, by its very own nature, volunteer work can be distibuted in several small & manageable chunks & need not be done in a single go.

Once looked upon in this manner, one shall find that volunteerism no longer remains an effort to fit in a bit of extra activity in your normal routine but is a process of utlising to maximum, whatever free time one wishes to spare. The difference is not as subtle as it appears. It is exactly the difference between finding time for speaking in between chewing your food & utilising the dinner time to speak. In first case, you will always find yourself consciously waiting for chewing to stop & then speak. But if you try, you will find on the other hand that speaking while chewing is not so difficult after all & very easily managed by distributing both efforts over the whole dinner-time. Ofcourse, the topic of conversation here would constitute the drive factor. Try speaking to someone about his last lecture from college over lunch-time vis-a-vis Bruce Willis's latest Diehard release & you would soon understand what I mean.

Try reading the sentences in bold above & see if you can interpolate an answer for yourself from them. If you can, the purpose of my writing this post is solved.

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PS: I hope this quenches the doubts in the mind of any volunteer (or one thinking of) regarding committing themselves to YTF. Despite of its informal nature, it is a very serious job & is only for the strong-willed. If you are wondering whether you have it in you, contact us at ytfindia@gmail.com