How is it supposed that something that has to be born from the heart is paying me back in dollars when I am living in Venezuela? It sounds utopian, but it's real. It is not a lie or corruption. It is a personal story of how I got to learn skills or perfect some that I already had in order to generate an income in a solid currency.
Writing this post I realized that throughout my life I was always extending my hand doing small actions that might generated a small or big impact and also shaped who I am today and who I want to become tomorrow.
In primary school I always offered to help the teacher to print activities for 40 students, my dad did not like it because that was a waste of money and that of being "very cooperative" was a nice word to say footman as they put it on the transcripts at the end of lapse. I was also a year offering to water the plants of the classroom because if nobody did, they would die. My mom was ok with it but she wasn't ok because I did nothing at home.
When I was 17 years old my best friend told me that "giving away books was giving away knowledge" when I invited her constantly to be part of the activities of the group that received books donations and created different activities to carry out those books, they were given as gifts, exchanged with others or relocated to public schools in the city.
And part of my university life, my other friends did not understand why I spent so much time dedicating myself to an international organization that did not have a real impact on the local community, but rather sent people away.
While I did not earn anything by making my dad to spend his money, he helped the teacher not sacrifice part of her salary and a group of 40 children of 10 years old to learn something outside the same texts as always. Although I did not learn to water the bushes, I learned to grab love and get interested in something foreign without expecting anything in return. The activities that came later did not leave me a really significant learning because most of it was to get money on the streets for a community, to decorate billboards or put balloons in a hospital because the seniors were going to do their social work the other day in the place. The good thing is that these actions were building my way of helping another without expecting anything in return because that is what volunteers do, right?
No. The concept that people have of volunteering in the head is giving unconditionally to a cause without expecting any retribution (which is the basis for starting volunteering) is the idea that discourages people from being part of these revolutionary social groups that the materialistic world in which we live is changing.
It does not mean to dedicate yourself to something for just for the passion you have about raising awareness about global warming or to accompany old people to spend the weekend, there must be a reason behind that annoying task that is being done. What will happen after the campaign you did for global warming? What will you be doing after being with the grandparents? Did you learn something real after this? What did you have left? If the reason why we are dedicating our time fills our hearts, it doesn't have to fill our pockets.
The motive can change for each person, in the first group where I was, my motive was to collaborate so that everyone had the opportunity to study. Be part of a group that gave others the chance to have a book in their hands, to do monthly activities so that the whole community could join and donate the family books that were grabbing dust and making them reach those who might They believed that it was unattainable to have something so expensive because it was barely enough to eat, it filled me up. Participating in the logistics of that group was enough for me and my heart. One of my most beautiful experiences was to see the happiness of a lady who earned a full volume of encyclopedias, she told me that her daughters had just started high school and that this material could help them. There it was, my love for books were linked to my reason for staying long hours behind a table, to annoy my friends to give away those books that were doing nothing in their homes and to get up early on a Saturday to go to La Llovizna Park for one or another event.
What comes after the reason to belong to a group that helps the community while doing something we like, is to meet people who are in the same movement as us. If we find the NGO that aligns with our tastes and values, , we will meet people who not only have the same crazy idea of revolutionizing the world at our own pace, but also because of the small role we play in that group, people with whom we are sharing will open doors because they know us and our work closely for very simple that may seem.
Many of those I met in my second relevant group, the international one, work ina website where everyone has work by doing things they did not know before stepping on this organization. One of us wrote an article in her blog explaining step by step how to be part of this page and how to work in whatever we want to do: designs, database, among others. Each and every one of these skills can be learned in this NGO , a member can no know it before entering, or someone else taught or they learned it with a number of Youtube videos in order to take the information from an efficient way to the other members.
To this day, one of my closest friends is still helping me find another who works through this portal, although he knows that I don't like designs or databases.
I am so grateful for each one of those who carried out the tasks of training us because we had to do something realted to the NGO but now we have an extra income for that "nonsense" that they taught us.
In my first group, I have already learned how to work on the radio community to promote our events, I ended up knowing those people in these plans that taught me to create a firm, simple and friendly speech for all ages in front of a microphone.
As I learned to train a group of people I felt totally prepared to teach English classes that although I did not gain in dollars, it forced me to practice something that I learned for 10 years and I had left to oxidize , but know it took me to: writing weekly articles and get paid in dollars. And the themes are also related to my altruism, students from all over the world can get their scholarship programs by universities programs, NGOs, or goverments.
The chance to be part of these local an international communities volunteering programs gave me the tools that I have now to earn what I earn. Everything I learned I did because I wanted to be part of the solution, and in the end, I am receiving income in a strong currency while I continue to help another group of strangers achieve their dreams.