A lot of time, people do expect that there are responsibilities owed to them by their neighbours or government and as such, they look up to the fulfilment of such obligation. These sets of people often forget that they too have responsibilities to fulfil for their neighbours, government or community.
Volunteering is simply the ability to be thoughtful in helping out a situation or to make something better than it was without necessarily asking for inducement. Most times, any work done by a volunteer is not rewarded with wages. Though, there's always a reward for volunteering.
It is an obligation for citizens to volunteer to help out the government build a better society. Since the government cannot do all that is required to have an egalitarian society, individuals should take it as a point of duty to make the society work.
I live in a developing society where there is no evidence of public facilities, I mean there are no pipe borne water, public electricity, medical facilities, clinics of maternity, tarred roads or drainage systems. In this part of the world, we call it a New Site. Most often, in such an environment, dwellers usually form a voluntary association of house owners or dwellers to foster development. Hence, I joined and became the secretary of the Community Development Association (CDA).
One of our responsibilities is to ensure the security of lives and property. By this, we form a cluster group of vigilantes, who keep watch on a rotational basis. This vigilante group is responsible for parading the community during the day when people have gone to work and at night when people are asleep, to keep miscreant and jobless community rats from breaking into people's homes to cart away valuables. We have had some success for over four years.
The major road that leads into the community is nothing to write home about. During the dry season, I join other community dwellers to cut down the roads to ward-off dangerous reptiles and to keep criminals away. From far away, sojourners can see what is happening and take heed when the need arises.
During the season also, due to our experience with water logged in large portholes, we ensure to prepare for the rainy season by improvising to better the road for accessibility to the community dwellers and visitors. So, what we do is, we ask for a free will donation of empty cement bags. With the cement bags, we can fill the portholes for smooth and easy access to the community.
After our first attempt, we discovered that people from outside got attracted to our community development strategy and either came to learn or to join the community.
Our most recent work is on electrification and drainage. The drainage system which was not in place was constructed by us. We reason that if we block the portholes and that rain has no passage it will still create a pond elsewhere knowing that water is powerful. Our best bet is to construct a drainage. It was a heavy task but we did it. Every Saturday when most people do not go to work, we ask the town crier to beat the community gong inviting them for the voluntary work of constructing a drainage . They were asked to come with their working tools and I tell you, the responses were always awesome. In no time, the drainage has been constructed.
My role here is to ensure that all jobs done by the present volunteers are related to our social media handles. Believe me, land owners who have not even started construction of their homes were always amazed and some do show their support by sending in their free will donation for the work to continue.
Recently, one of my neighbours got concerned about the power supply. About one hundred metres away we can see a power supply in a nearby community. So, we volunteered to find out what it will take to connect our community with the power line. It was not an easy task from the onset but we ventured into it.
In our bid to find lasting power supply problems in our community we stumbled on a big problem. The one hundred metres gap is swampy. After all thoughts have been considered, we had to push our idea to the public space. The response we got was overwhelming.
Volunteering has helped us a great deal in achieving some of the unbelievable track records in less than four years. I wish that this feat can be replicated in various parts of our national life like I read in the news today that a popular Anambra socialite volunteered to purchase 100 electric vehicles as taxis within the metropolis, thereby reducing the cost of transportation from a thousand naira to three hundred naira. Volunteering is the only way that major human problems can be sorted. Let's not fold our arms.