Philanthropy and volunteerism: A need of the hour
According to Quran, righteousness is not to turn your faces to east or west but the one who believe in One God, the Prophets, the angels, the books and who gives money from their wealth to poor, old, the son of roads and orphans…
According to Pakistan Centre of Philanthropy (PCP), the list of donors (philanthropist) in Pakistan showed an incredible increase from past few years. Pakistan’s public listed companies donated/ have contributed a remarkable amount of 4.8 billion. Displays an increase of 18% from 2012. It also presents 21 fold increases from base years 2000. The worth mentioning figure is 2% increase in contributors in past years. These data thereby show the eagerness and passion of people contributing to education, community, improvement and development.
According to Albeit Einstein, It’s a man’s obligation to put back into the world, at least, equivalent what he takes out of it. Back in October 2005, this brave cum resilient nation faced the disastrous earthquake and the happening till this day is considered an unfortunate day which takes away 100,000 lives and left 3.5 displaced. The earthquake and its aftershocks demolished nearly every building in affected areas. People over there lacked first aid facilities and knowledge of rescuing the people trapped under buildings. When the government was stuck in a state of panic, the responsibility merely fell on individual’s shoulder to do whatever they could to rescue and save people’s lives. Collecting funds and volunteering oneself was the sign of compassion in Pakistani AAM AWAM. People donated funds for rehabilitation of victims. Trucks full of stuff like clothes, feeding materials e.g. dry products were sent to them.
According to the words of Nazar Hussain Nazar DG (director general of NVM), Pakistan‘s youth is filled with the spirit of volunteerism but all we need is to give them training and opportunities. The ratio of students graduated every year is increasing day by day. We lack opportunities at our home of providing them with multiple volunteering opportunities.
Once the notion (every graduate will be given degree after he/she teaches for several months in a rural area) was floated in the nation, it was quite impressing but remained to the idea and never implemented. If we put this idea and few more likewise in our ruling party explaining the pros of such projects, implement it along with incentives for students and employees of the public/private sector as well.
A project like every student shall perform public duty in the form of a full-fledged project like Karachities started. In Karachi, people started a campaign on Facebook, which turned into a project of cleaning roads and collecting trash. Only 40 out of 40,000 pledged to join the campaign, number of volunteers do not matter, but the Passion and motivation are all that we need NOW!…
Incentives shall be like “addition in their degree which would give their degree weight age and CV similarly than the person who haven’t done such projects”. Recruitments in every field shall consider in priority such CVs.
The writer is a student of Defense and Diplomatic Studies at Fatima Jinnah Women University.
