By Akani Nkuna
The leader of the Education Workstream at Jozi My Jozi, Ria de Villiers, has called for the standardisation of volunteering amongst Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), community leaders, schools and individual entities to deepen and enhance the influence that volunteering has on communities.
“We need to talk to each other, so that we can scale-up volunteering so that it is not limited to small boxes of individuals, ensuring that it becomes a tool for social cohesion. Building Jozi and also building our nation,” she said on Saturday.
“By standardisation I do not mean making volunteering grander, but rather to work according to a model that covers safety and security for the children going out to do it, that covers the sense of purpose. If we had a way of doing it with proper guidelines, it could be deeper and better.”
De Villiers was speaking to Inside Education at an event in Kingsmead College, Johannesburg, on Saturday, 20 September, where various NGOs, community leaders, students and teachers held a conference about youth impact, particularly in building and serving communities through the act of voluntary work.
The conference sought to encourage inter-school volunteering collaboration and featured panel discussions from leaders of leading NGOs and students involved in voluntary work in both their individual capacity or through NGOs, including efforts on how to track the impact of voluntary work across the province.
De Villiers dubbed the conference as the turning point where cohesion and collaboration between NGOs, private and public entities will work to ensure that efforts undertaken by the stakeholders advances community building and fosters a thriving nation.
“This is the beginning of our journey with school children because that is where the real heart of volunteering is. We all care about the country, we care about Jozi, and if we could get learners to cross the divide between rich and poor, under-served and privileged, we are going to have a brilliant country,” she told Inside Education.
Director of Service at Kingsmead, Karen Landi emphasised that the conference sought to encourage dialogue between all the stakeholders and dissuade elements of persistent silo operations and dissonance. The main objective across the NGOs is uniform, centred on community service, she said.
“We are not communicating enough – the schools are not communicating with each other, NGOs all need to be talking more, the parents and the children — and currently the conversations are not happening,” she said.
“One of the main objective today is to move forward with discussions about how we can be more engaging in terms of service. In order to do that, we need the voices of the different stakeholders.”
A student volunteer and receiver of The President’s Award, Karinah Chengalaryan, told Inside Education about the importance of students volunteering within their communities. This, she said, assists in bringing about a positive difference despite the harshness of the environment from which some of them emerge.
Chengalaryan urged students to take responsibly in harnessing a better reality in their communities, and be willing participants of change and consideration — particularly between their peers — to ensure that no one is left behind in terms of development and opportunities.
“Volunteering opened up my horizons. I realise that I am a student of privilege and because of that, I feel I have a greater responsibility to give back to the community that does not necessarily have the privileges that I have. I have the ability to help them and uplift their lives,” she said.
INSIDE EDUCATION
