A new era of volunteerism

 A culture of volunteerism is one of the greatest intangible assets of Nepal. Till now the National Development Volunteering Service (NDVS), a successor of a pan­chayat-era scheme that sent grad­uate students for community work in rural areas, has been successfully offering opportunities to local youth to develop their volunteering skills. Thousands of skilled youth have been engaged in the NDVS, with a strong sense of mission and humble but effective leadership. With the country’s restructuring as a federal state, the modus ope­randi of the NDVS, a program here­tofore run by the National Planning Commission, a strategy and policy making body rather than an imple­menting one, had to change. While many details are still unknown, the NDVS has stopped operating and possibly the Ministry of Youth and Sports is taking over its work.

Even more realistically, the scope, mission and activities of the NDVS will be integrated into the National Youth Council, an autonomous apex body within the ministry in charge of implementing actions and poli­cies supporting self-empowerment of local youth.

With this development, we have an incredible opportunity to bring volunteerism to the mainstream. Yet we need to make sure that the concept of the NDVS, the idea of mobilizing skilled youth for local development, remains not only alive but also gets up-scaled.

We need to think from the per­spective of the federal system, and how each state can promote and facilitate community-led social actions. The new government units, at all levels, can play an important role in engaging youth and other members of the community for social and economic development.

The fact that a central level minis­try is now taking full responsibility for spreading and supporting volun­teering is something positive.

My preferred option would have been to turn the NDVS into a fully autonomous agency as volunteer­ism is something that can be prac­ticed by everybody regardless of age. There are several examples from around the world, including from fully federal states like the US and Australia, where a central body promoting volunteerism cooperates and co-lives with state-based agen­cies in charge of rolling out volun­teering programs in collaboration with the civil society.

Perhaps it is still premature to talk of such a big change in Nepal. We have to make the best of the opportunities arising from having the ministry take charge of volun­teerism. The National Youth Coun­cil, if properly supported by the ministry, could roll out different volunteering schemes that could be co-developed and embraced by state and other government units.

General outlines could be enriched by taking into account local needs, or local government units can be supported technically in devising their own schemes that are backstopped or financially sup­ported by the center.

One such program could be a revi­talization of the activities that until recently were undertaken by the NDVS and which offered a platform of self-development for recently graduated students. Perhaps a prob­lem with the NDVS was a lack of visibility as too many youth were still unaware of the opportunities it offered.

Now with the ministry and the National Youth Council fully in charge, there is greater scope to market and promote volunteerism, a rich and diverse phenomenon that includes both formal and informal ways of helping others or a cause.

It can be carried out through local or international NGOs or even by bilateral partners through their skilled overseas volunteers (think of KOICA, JICA, PEACE CORPS and Australian Aid Volunteers). But also, and this is really important and often neglected, through small, informal initiatives where a mother group, a parent-student associa­tion or a youth club carry out social actions based on local needs.

Recently the Ministry of Youth and Sport in collaboration with United Nation Volunteers called a meeting with all the key volunteering pro­moting agencies in the country. The goal was to understand the contri­bution of volunteerism for the real­ization of the country’s Sustainable Development Goals, assess the num­ber of volunteers engaged at local levels, and measure their impact as well as their working modality.

When all the information is put together, the ministry will roll out a ‘National Situational Analysis’ that will used as a baseline feeding into a 2019 high-level political forum called ‘Empowering People and Ensuring Inclusiveness and Equal­ity’. This will be held regionally in the Asia-Pacific but also globally at the UN Headquarter in New York.

For long, there have been discus­sions about a national network of all agencies, national and international, involved in volunteerism. But it was not possible to run such a network on continuous basis and inclusively.

Perhaps the organizations involved in the situational analysis of volunteerism in Nepal could be the constituent members of such a network under the leadership of the National Youth Council or the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

Doors should also be open for organizations mobilizing volunteers who are in different age brackets, as volunteerism should be inclusive of all, especially those who have few opportunities for self-development or those who have retired but still want to contribute. Hopefully the National Situation Analysis can be used as a launch-pad for discussions leading to a national volunteering strategy. Incorporating and using the institutional memory and exper­tise of what remains of the NDVS would facilitate the process.

 

The author is a co-founder of ENGAGE, an NGO partnering with youths living with disabilities