As a volunteering enthusiast, I feel it's incumbent to shed some light on whether the volunteering community is born from flashy titles, embellishing resumes and service hours to meet a study requirement, or if it results from the students' interest in giving back to the community.
The “innocuous” volunteering has indeed maintained a balance of purity, though at a huge cost. Academic requirements put “me” before “us.”
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics in its 2016 report on “Volunteering in United States” said that roughly 62.6 million people volunteered through or for an organization in a span of a year. This is just 19.6 percent of the nation's population of more than 319 million people.
Fair enough, but don’t you want to know where ASU students stand? Triumphantly, they gave back an estimated 1.8 million hours of service to the community and in return, ASU was named a recipient of the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor.
“Volunteering allows students, especially introverts, to break the ice with the outer world and make new connections,” Tina Zecher, the program coordinator for ASU, said.
A small survey was conducted to measure student opinions on volunteering. It revealed that almost 70 percent of respondents didn’t know what Dean’s Funding points were.
So, what exactly are these Dean's Funding points and how do they help volunteering organizations?
When you volunteer for events that have been approved for Dean’s Funding, your student organization earns points. Once the student organization earns a certain number of points in the semester, it receives money to be used for events/materials.
For example, Circle K International (CKI) ASU chapter, a student-led collegiate service focused on community service such as the Special Olympics, Feed my Starving Children, Tempe Cares, Project Cure and many more, uses Dean's Funding points to continue offering volunteer services.
"It’s very important from a volunteer coordinator’s perspective," Zecher said. "It keeps me instead from having 20 people coming to an event to having more than 40 people who are willing to show up. If someone needs volunteers for an event and if that’s what it takes to incentivize someone to come out and volunteer then it’s highly beneficial for me.”
Volunteering coordinators are doing a splendid job, but aren't they manipulating the social conscience of the students? It seems unethical on part of coordinators to act out of self-interest.
"I have my own motivations too," Zecher said. "From coordinator’s perspective, I just need manpower to help run the event and if for that I have to give them food, then so be it."
Changemaker Central, the epicenter of great social work at ASU and locally in Arizona, has been instrumental in producing the finest social volunteers and community service programs. They run programs like Service Leadership Program, Startup Summit, Sparky’s Day of Service, Ignite Story Series and Changemaker Challenge.
“Our best achievement so far has been the significant number of startups we helped to conceive," Yann Raymond, Solutions Chair of Changemaker Central, said. "We pay $40,000 every year to support social ventures.”
On internships at Changemaker he said, “Dozens of internships are offered annually. It usually is a five-hour commitment per week.”
The point of contention is: would students still enroll for volunteering events at Changemaker Central if internships and other high-impact career supportive events like Ignite or Service Leadership Summit didn't exist? Perhaps they wouldn't, since the events wouldn't boost their resumes or leverage future career prospects.
Raymond also revealed that some people were doing volunteering for sorority requirements, or ASU 101 requirements for freshmen year. It is necessary for their majors which require service hours.
“We start our services early Saturday morning," Raymond said. "Students wake up early tired, they contribute for the service for four hours, and you can see the zeal and energy they have when they return. We have pizzas in the end not only to thank everyone but also to provide a good experience for students”
Though that seems to be a reasonable explanation for distributing food, calling it a hidden incentive would be a legitimate argument.
Having said that, some students have genuine interests in contributing to the community. It takes only one person to taint the system.
"The people who do it for selfish motives will never benefit from it because they will get caught eventually," Raymond said.
He said that it was alright if the community was benefited at the end of the day, and one should be proud of that title after putting selfless hours for the community.
The people who do wrong should be condemned even if their efforts are paying off good dividends. Is volunteering still a noble cause anymore?
Reach the reporter at rahulverma.asu@gmail.com or follow @Rahul_Sun_V on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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