Volunteering has always been another name of positivity to me. The person who once felt happy and safe just by prevailing within his comfort zone, holding the tag of a backbencher, or encircled with the handful of friends of his neighbourhood, somehow have managed himself to evolve as a new personality. While scripting this article, it was quite late at night and I finished my commitment to representing my beloved country in the Global Platform as a Delegate. Indeed, I do take tons of responsibilities, propel myself across boundaries, and more importantly, challenge myself to the utmost level to extract the best out of it. Failure does not bother me anymore as I have figured out how to retaliate and to be relentless until the taste of triumph is obtained.
You can study government and politics in school, but the best way to really understand the process is to volunteer your time.
~Rob McKenna
Nowadays when I look back, reminisce about the struggles and compare myself, I cannot, however, feel surprised and be grateful to my destiny as I have been bestowed with an abundance of opportunities to interact with people, observe their lifestyle closely and get a better understanding over culture, values, and beliefs. It is nothing but Volunteering that has offered me the floor to travel every corner of my home country and abroad, helped me transform myself from an individual to a team player, prepared myself to come up with the new ideas and eventually, developed myself to emerge as a leader who holds the authority to motivate a large group of people and facilitate them towards building the world a better place for everyone.
In the year 2018, as a part of the International Research Project, I flew to a South-East nation of Asia known as Cambodia. The entire trip had been a unique experience for me where I did suffer at the beginning but enjoyed each step of mine. Here, from applying for the VISA to finding myself within the International airport, habituating with the new food to learning a new language, using dollars to converting them in local currency and building the friendship with different nationalities e.g. Indian, Nepalese, Khmer, English, Thai, Scottish to conduct research in diverse communities and so are the people of different backgrounds. All these experiences introduced me to both new challenges and opportunities as well. Celebrating the ritual of feasting the ancestors is one of the highlighted experiences I had during my visit to the Kratie province, located in the northeast part of Cambodia. In this festival, the Khmer people flock to the graveyard of their forefathers, offer them various types of delicious food, play loud music in the speaker and dance there with the rhythm of music, and later, eat the food together. Moreover, they decorate the graves with a lot of colourful paper cuts and ribbons to cheer up the departed souls. The ceremony gives me a life lesson that every culture is unique and fresh in its distinctive way. As a volunteer, we should always harness and preserve this precious ornament of human culture for the future generation who may badly need such joy in their life.
Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain loving one another
~Erma Bombeck
At long last, it needs no telling that the journey of volunteerism shapes and moulds the present into a future of which we can all be proud. At every stage, we can discover our new identity, get new inspiration for living our life with more positivity and enthusiasm, feel a closer connection with people, society and culture, and more importantly, it can offer us the best possible ways to serve humanity.
