At One’s Own Will

 Young people are willing to spend their free time not entertaining themselves but helping their neighbour

Valentina Yaroslavtseva, Sverdlovsk region 

(REGIONAL NEWS) – Unpaid help to people is not out of the way nowadays. Recent sociological surveys conducted in the Sverdlovsk region revealed that quite a few young people are willing to spend their free time not entertaining themselves but helping their neighbour.

The researchers believe that it is quite logical. As a rule, the youth have more free time to spend, openness and intact desire to give a helping hand. People just don’t know what to begin with.

Noble hobby

Social project ‘An hour of care’ came to light in late December last year thanks to the spearhead consisting of fourteen young people. Project administrator Ilya Martirosyan recalls:

“First, friends of mine and I would simply visit boarding schools for orphans and homes for elderly, and we did all we could to help there. Then the idea struck us to tell about the project in public, so that all people wishing to take care of the elderly and children could do it.

We don’t render financial assistance as this is what numerous charity funds do. True, now orphan homes are well provided with practically everything – new furniture, toys and DVD-players. But children there, as well as the elderly, simply want to be attended and taken care of.”

So far, the voluntary assistance of project participants has lied in organizing subbotniki (voluntary actions to make a positive change in society usually with regard to environment), performance arts, conducting development games and events at orphan homes. ‘An hour of care’ collaborates with many public organizations and charitable creative groups; it also actively engages students of pedagogical and construction units in its activities. Sometimes the project officers recruit new volunteers outdoors.

“Quite recently, customers at the city mart have been asked to write a message for a kid at an orphan home,” Ilya goes on. “And, there was a response: we managed to collect some six hundred letters. Many people would leave their phone numbers in the messages so they should be contacted.”

Martirosyan admitted all the participants of the project would rather think what they do is a hobby without pursuing any political dividends, not to mention any personal profit.

Ticket to the future

Most people would like to volunteer in their impulse of altruism once or twice a year. But some are happy to volunteer on the regular basis. Such regular volunteer assistance is much more effective if it is well organized.

To achieve exactly this, the Volunteering Centre ‘Parus’ (Sail, - trans.) was established in the city of Yekaterinburg on the basis of the Youth Volunteering Organization ‘Druzhina’ (Retinue, - trans.) together with the Urals Institute for Social Education under the auspices of the department of youth in the Sverdlovsk region and the Yekaterinburg diocese.

The Centre’s main objective is to create jobs for volunteers at enterprises and organizations. For this purpose, they draw lists of both volunteers and the organizations that wish to accommodate them.

They are developing a shop for those wishing to help, who can then choose by themselves a job they would like to do. Head of the social projects at the Diocese Youth Department Ksenia Podymova goes on to explain:

“We seek our volunteers enjoy minimum working conditions. For instance, a girl who wishes to care of abandoned children in hospital must surely have a hospital attendant’s permit, then a hospital uniform, a special pair of shoes. What is also important is that a volunteer comes, of course, to volunteer his abilities unpaid, but I am confident that he or she must be rewarded in some way. We are here to cater for their transportation fees, connection services and food if necessary.

Today, the Centre ‘Parus’ has actively engaged over two hundred volunteers. They are mostly students. It is the second year that they conduct the interactive intellectual game ‘Learn the truth’. The centre accommodates its own membership clubs and holds thematic functions. Ms. Podymlova persists that a creative atmosphere like this helps bring more young people to volunteering activities.

An intelligent approach

It is a must for volunteering centre to give recruits some professional skills. If a volunteer wishes to work, for example, at an orphan home, he or she must have basic pedagogical skills and be psychologically competent.

The conditions created here encourage young people not only to help disadvantaged persons but also to acquire skills and working experience that may be very useful in their future.

‘Parus’ volunteers conduct development games and literature competitions at orphan homes, as well as art and theatre performances. In hospitals, volunteers help medical staff to take care of abandoned babies. Many of the young people collaborate with the Sverdlovsk regional centre for AIDS prevention. They are engaged in meetings with senior schoolchildren and peer students, as well as with the parents of HIV-positive children.

A new project is currently being developed, which is to help the elderly, who require care. There are immediate volunteers, who wish to deal exactly with lonely old people.

“By coming to help their countrymen on a rainy day, the young people learn to interact in society, get the first skills and working experience, and, last but not the least, they find like-minded friends,” the officers of different volunteering organizations confidently say.