Volunteerism is not a new phenomenon; it has been with us for many years. It is a situation where people commit their time and skills for the common good without expecting monetary rewards for their efforts.

Volunteering contributes immensely to the development of communities, especially to those communities in sub Saharan Africa. The productivity of volunteers is maximized when individual volunteers with special gifts is targeted and matched with the community problem/challenge.

Some times, community based organizations are targeted for capacity building through volunteers, thereby increasing the capacities of these communities. Through volunteers, IADP and Volunteer Challenge, professionals and young people are given the chance to educate the poor on sustainable agriculture, dangers of HIV/AIDS, health care, business or wealth creation, so that we can improve lives of more than 60% of Kenyans living on less than a dollar per day.

IADP and Volunteer Challenge match appropriately the talents of volunteers, thus helping to create wealth, improve livelihoods and increase inter-cultural understanding and tolerance in Eastern Africa, hence contributing to make this world a better place to live.

The power of volunteerism is immense. Let us take time to calculate wealth generated by volunteers, if 5 million health adults volunteered for only one hour in a day. That will translate to 5 million man hours or 166,600 days. Divide that by five working days, you get 55,555 weeks or 222 years. This is the kind of resources that will accrue to the society. However, the concept of volunteerism is a win-win situation, because the volunteers also benefit in terms of training, exposure, networks, personal fulfillment and experience.    

Throughout history the power of volunteering has been harnessed to change society for the better. It is well illustrated in Kenya through freedom struggle where people dedicated energy, time and money to gain independence from the British. Similarly, this volunteerism spirit was demonstrated in India’s independence movement, Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, Americas’ civil rights movement and more recently the Indonesian Tsunami. In fact, volunteering is as old as mankind and it is slowly picking up in Kenya.  

Martin Luther King Once said, insecurity anywhere, is insecurity everywhere. This insecurity may be as a result of poverty or anarchy, whatever the cause; it results in making this global village insecure. Hence the need for all us to tackle the problem of poverty today before it becomes a time bomb.        

This is the background from which “Volunteer Challenge” was established by a sister organization, the International Association of Development Professionals (IADP). For more details concerning these organizations, please visit www.iadpinternational.org or www.volunteerchallenge.org