17 Million Hours for Development*
Deanie Lyn Ocampo
Volunteering is a significant part of national and local development. It is remarkable how volunteering hours can translate to concrete contributions to uplift the lives of Filipino communities. Activities would range from teaching farming innovations, to offering livelihood assistance programs, to planting trees and designing a solid waste management plan. The results give confidence and added esteem to the effort of Filipino volunteers, and clarify, albeit to a limited extent, its economic impact.
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In Einstein’s Dreams, physicist-writer Alan Lightman narrates “…there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time…The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.”
Evidences of both times abound in the world of volunteers:
In Bohol, a volunteer used time precisely. Because there have been four decades of non-productivity in cattle breeding, she taught the farmers how to utilize artificial insemination. On certain days, they would prepare the frozen semen. At this minute, they would collect the ovum. At this second, they would inseminate. At this hour, they would transfer the embryo. The clock ticked to one year and the number of calves in Bohol increased to 1,000 more.
Another volunteer sat in the office of the leaders of the Moro National Liberation Front in Davao del Sur with a rifle’s butt aimed at his belly. He tactfully presented the livelihood assistance program for the soldiers, their families and communities. There was no need to gain their utmost trust within the next 30 minutes, or even before sunset that day. He knew that time stretches into very difficult hours for people who live in armed conflict. Hope is a thin strand in the skein of many losses.
Yet, in both times, volunteers sense the urgency. They go to where they are needed for local or national development. They exchange ideas with Philippine policy makers on HIV/AIDS; plant endemic trees of Negros Oriental with the close-to-nature method; and design Camiguin’s solid waste management plan with local government officials.
For the moment they do not mind that development is a long-term process while their volunteer work is time-bound. They simply go to face the underweight children, the harried teachers, the trafficked women, the riles settlers.
“Volunteers help us carry out our work in sometimes difficult and dangerous conditions,” former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan humbly recognized. “They fight poverty and marginalization. Without their courage, generosity and dedication, the work of the United Nations would be much more difficult.”
In 2001, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the International Year of Volunteers (IYV), and in 2011, it led the whole world in celebrating ten years of volunteer promotion, facilitation, recognition, and networking.
Time, indeed, commemorates the essential.
But how much have Filipino volunteers contributed to development during those ten years?
According to the United Nations Volunteers Programme’s Strategic Review of the Volunteer System in the Philippines in 2004, there has been no system that documented the volunteering activities across the academe, business, non profits and government through the years.
The International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) Philippines (http://www.iavephilippines.org/) recognizes that Filipino volunteers is a growing sector and a sizable economic factor. As such, it conducted the pioneering “IYV+10 Philippine Project: Ten Million Volunteer Hours” in 2011-2012 to recognize the quantitative contribution of Filipino volunteers for national-local development in the Philippines.
It found out that Filipino volunteers rendered at least 17 million volunteer hours during the period 2007-2010.
This translates to time and talent worth at least P1 billion for national and local development in our country in four years.
The monetary valuation was conservatively based on P500 daily wage and the volunteer hours of at least 40,000 volunteers documented by 34 organizations from the academe, government, NGO, and business sectors.
The top three Millennium Development Goals addressed by their programs are: (1) achievement of universal primary education; (2) promotion of gender and equality and empowerment of women; and (3) eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.
Volunteers also helped out in areas like environment, emergency relief, culture, sports, and agriculture. Their volunteer effort has benefitted at least 340,000 Filipino individuals and households.
Majority of the volunteers were female and in the age group 36-59 years.
Volunteers freely enlist for service and contribute directly or indirectly to the delivery of the organization’s programs and projects. They are not paid salaries for their effort, but may receive allowances (transportation, food, lodging, etc.) that do not exceed the minimum wage.
The results give confidence and added esteem to the effort of Filipino volunteers, and clarify, albeit to a limited extent, its economic impact.
Then again, the value of volunteering is not all about recorded time.
In Bicol, volunteers conducted Science “magic shows” for the province’s school children to demonstrate several science principles in non-traditional ways. They organized stargazing nights on rooftops. Beginning at dusk, the telescopes brought the heavenly bodies closer to the children. Three hours after, the activity was done. But many months and years later, the children would remember the lessons from such evenings.
“Many important parts of life are immeasurable: the contributions volunteers give to their communities and environment, and the satisfaction you gain while making a difference. Intellectually, researchers may measure volunteer impacts, and thinkers on the sidelines may conceptualize it, but only active volunteers know the true value of volunteering,” reminds Brian Cugelman, architect of UN Volunteers’ www.WorldVolunteerWeb.org.
Beyond IYV+10, opportunities exist that can mobilize many more volunteers, raise the profile of volunteering, and showcase the diversity, breadth and depth of volunteering in the Philippines. It is time that volunteering for development comes into clearer focus.
For whether it is mechanical or body time, in Einstein’s Dreams, volunteers can “make a world in either time. Each time is true, (even if) the truths are not the same.”
*Adapted from the article, “Ten Million Hours for Development,” written by the author and first published in Tulay Fortnightly, Chinese-Filipino Digest, Dec. 10, 2010 issue
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Deanie is the Capacity Building Officer of the Citzens’ Participation in Monitoring of LGU Performance (CML) Project.