The Hindu Business Line : Let’s help

"Corporates stand to gain as volunteers create a social image about the company. Moreover, they learn leadership skills besides adding value to the self."

Coming together: iVolunteers with professional skills take part in rural development work.

Sumithra Thangavelu

When Aadhan shifted to hometown Chennai in February this year, after 10 years in the US, he brought with him not just knowledge of information systems but also a mindset geared to work for a social cause.

In Virginia, where he studied and later worked as a software developer, Aadhan volunteered at a children’s library and, later, at the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters there. On his return to India, he wanted to give something back to the community here as well, but didn’t know where to begin.

He turned to Google for help and stumbled upon iVolunteer, a platform linking socially-conscious individuals with social organisations. “It was a relief to have a guide,” says Aadhan, who now spends about two hours on Saturday evenings with children at an orphanage, sharing thoughts or simply playing. “It’s not about giving money, it’s about giving time.”

iVolunteer aims to encourage people with skills to reach out, to think beyond ‘government’, to be the change in helping develop the nation. “The green revolution helped India stock up on food grains and the white revolution, on milk. Then came the IT revolution. We wanted to create a volunteering revolution to help build India,” says Rahul Nainwal, who together with Shalabh Sahai founded the charity in 2001.

The first steps

The idea for iVolunteer was sown during the two years Rahul and Shalabh were at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. They realised that professionalising the social sector was the way to spur rural development. They also saw that with the right kind of set-up they could marshal volunteers for the effort. .

A Web site was launched ( www.ivolunteer.com) and a centre started in Delhi, followed by centres in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. The team approached NGOs and corporates to spread the word through meetings at professional clubs, seminars at colleges and schools, and word-of-mouth and other communication activities.

The emphasis was on placing volunteers with skills that matched the needs of each NGO. “To provide real value it is important to work on projects that utilise your professional skills towards human objectives. The work should deliver at the end of the day. The volunteer should feel ‘I have added something’,” says Shalabh.

Formal volunteering, according to iVolunteer, is “an activity that takes place in charitable, civic, social, educational, governmental and community-based organisations and is undertaken for the benefit of the community, organisation and the volunteer; of the volunteer’s own free will and without coercion; for no financial payment; and in designated volunteer positions”.

Bangalore-based Nagaraj, 23, has been associated with iVolunteer for two years now. He has a Masters in Social Work and a leaning towards film-making. Together with two friends, he made a documentary on mentally disabled children for an NGO and it is now being used to spread awareness about the disability. “People ask me how they can help, and that makes me feel like I have helped in some way,” says Nagaraj.

Heart for the heartlands

iVolunteer also has projects such as India Fellow, designed to take youngsters into rural heartlands to see for themselves the challenges in the development process. The six-week course was started as a pilot in 2005 in Delhi, with 17 volunteers chosen on a competitive basis from colleges.

“The process gives them a lot of experience. All this adds to their persona. Our goal here is that tomorrow, whatever they do, they will positively engage in development work in India,” says Shalabh, voicing hope. This year, 56 Fellows were placed in 28 NGOs in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Uttarakhand; in 2008 the organisation hopes to place 100 Fellows in several more NGOs, including those in North East India.

The concept of seva is not new in the country’s millennia-old history, explains Rahul. However, the defining moment for volunteerism was the Gandhian movement. Many were inspired by the call of Independence. Doctors and lawyers left paying jobs to work in rural areas. This could be taken to be the starting point of formal volunteering in India, he says.

“The momentum sustained through to the 1970s and 1980s and became more professional in the 1990s, when part-time volunteers grew in number. It’s only in the last five years that urban professionals are taking to volunteering, unlike in the West where companies actually value people who do development work, as it helps build their leadership skills,” he says.

iVolunteer specifically targets corporates in its Employee Volunteering programme, started in 2005, in an attempt to help companies fulfil social outreach goals. The process is slow and challenging, says Rahul. “There’s a Corporate Social Responsibility system in place but nothing beyond. The attitude is: ‘I can give money and be done with it.’ And, ‘volunteering takes up company time’; there’s a cost attached to it as it’s a paid service,” says Shalabh.

To bring in a new focus, the organisation is attempting to show companies how volunteering could help bring down attrition rates far more effectively than, say, the hobby clubs and other outings organised routinely, as people add value to the self and, therefore, to the company.

Sanjay Mudnaney, Assistant General Manager, Corporate Communications at Mastek and Head, Mastek Foundation, agrees. “Companies stand to gain as volunteers create a social image about the company. Moreover, they learn leadership skills besides adding value to the self,” he says.

Nearly 45 employees at Mastek now spend time on Saturdays with two NGOs that work with orphaned children and children living with HIV/AIDS respectively. “Earlier, field visits to NGOs were done randomly and as a one-time activity. People used to feel good at that point of time before it was forgotten. We wanted to be associated for a longer term to see the change on the ground,” Mudnaney says

Caring corporates

He also points out that more and more employees in India Inc today are ‘uncomfortable’ seeing the discrepancies in the country’s development process. “They are very much aware that they are the lucky ones who have much more than others. They really want to help,” he says.

The changes in iVolunteer itself amply reflect this phenomenon. The service organisation has grown from 30-40 volunteers in 2001 to about 5,000 now, 70 per cent of whom are working professionals. As many as 100-120 individuals are placed in the service sector every month through its four centres.

Prabhu, 25, a software engineer who guides children in academics and personality development, is one such example. “When we meet people from different walks of life, our perspectives change. Being with those that don’t have what I do makes me realise that our life should be of some use to others. That’s what motivates me,” he says.

And for the NGOs, the new ranks of volunteers are making a huge difference. Pramod Kulkarni, who runs Vidya Poshak in Bangalore — an organisation that assists meritorious students from needy sections of society, says organisations need much more than just money. “Here, providing fees is one thing but help in the form of analysing a student’s capabilities, offering suggestions, and motivating them gives immeasurable value,” he says.

Over the weekend, about 20-odd iVolunteers from IIM, IIT and other IT companies guide the 60 children in academics, besides sharpening their problem-solving skills and analytical reasoning abilities. “About 40 per cent of our core strength is because of these volunteers,” says Kulkarni happily.

iVolunteer recently launched its India Fellow Professional Programme, seeking out volunteers among MBAs with at least two years’ work experience to reach out to needy sections in rural areas.

Sriram, in a testimonial on iVolunteer’s Web site, explains how he spent two months helping streamline the work of an NGO working with issues such as watershed management and women’s empowerment in Maharashtra, resulting in a five-fold increase in turnover.

iVolunteer has approached companies with its programme, which requires employees to take sabbaticals of 3-6 months for work with NGOs in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.

“There’s a vast resource of human capital in corporate India and involving them will drive real value into development. But current HR policies don’t allow such a system,” says Shalabh.

To work around that, through November-December this year, iVolunteer is placing 10 employees in various NGOs “to create case studies so that other organisations will come forward”.

Anusha, who runs iVolunteer in Chennai, says enabling such experiences helps dispel ignorance, especially among youth. “During presentations in colleges, most of the students are surprised at the possibilities in volunteering. I often hear them say ‘I can do so much? I didn’t know’.”

iVolunteer can be contacted at Chennai: (044) 42892791, 0-9841487984; New Delhi: (011) 26217460, 65672160; Bangalore: (080) 41466568; Mumbai: (022) 26105235, 65828875.

Email: info@ivolunteer.org.in

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