abrampa.com: National Volunteer Day (#NVDay'15) Highlights

National Volunteer Day (#NVDay) Highlights

Volunteerism in my opinion has to do with an individual impacting positively into the lives of people out of his own freewill. History taught us that, great people like Kwame Nkrumah, Yaa Asantewaa, Nelson Mandela and others, fought to make the world a better place for all. That is volunteerism. Imagine what the world would be like, if these great men decided not to volunteer what they have. This tells us that volunteerism goes a long way to affect generation positively. But the question here is, amongst the 1.8 billion youth across the world, how many volunteer? 40% out of 100% do, which is very appalling.

Due to this, the Ghana Think Foundation instituted the National Volunteer Day to come off every September 21st in Ghana. The initiative is to get as many people as possible in Ghana to volunteer their time or do community service on the Founder’s Day Holiday. While volunteerism is not very popular and part of our society’s fabric, many individuals and organizations volunteer occasionally. National Volunteer Day is to increase these numbers and unify efforts in volunteerism in Ghana. Great initiative isn’t it.

On this faithful day, people volunteered through various ways. Some decided to mobilize tools to clean beaches in Accra, others also organized health walk which brought people from all walks of life. My colleagues and I decided to volunteer in an extraordinary way. We volunteered by donating cloths and drinks to people who are mentally challenged and vulnerable children as well. This move was inspired by Grace Ashitey on her birthday , Ms Esi Yankay, Francis Oko Armah and few others and also supported by Tabernacle Health Care.

The Donation started from the streets of Nungua, were we encountered numerous challenges. Some people with mental difficulties welcomed the team warmly and accepted what we have for them. But to some, we had to run for our lives. They perceived us as people coming to harm them, and reacted quickly by ignoring us and attempt hurting us.

The journey continued and we later ended at Teshie, a town next to Nungua.

On getting to Teshie Sango beach, we met couple of fisher folks and some vulnerable children. And guess what; another “wahala”. The fisher folks agreed to our idea on a funny condition. They asked for an amount of money before accepting our items for donation and mobilizing the children. That’s amazing.

Lobbying them to buy into our idea even worsened the situation, the atmosphere then became blurring to some children who built their hopes when seeing the items. But that was not the end for these children, they taught. Unknowing, they followed us when we drove off to the neighboring day care centre, were we had a Good Samaritan volunteering to mobilize some vulnerable children to be beneficiaries of the items we have.

The donation started and within a twinkle of an eye, we had about 150 children surrounding us. By God’s grace, every single soul received something from our donation and that brought smiles on their faces. The journey was never easy but at the end, we impacted into peoples’ life.