INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEER DAY!

“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
– Oscar Wilde

Across the world, 5^th December is observed as the International Volunteer Day, which offers an opportunity for volunteer-involving organizations and individual volunteers to promote volunteerism at local, national and international level. International Volunteer Day is a chance for individual volunteers, communities and organizations to promote their contributions to development sector at all levels.

This year, on the occasion of International Volunteer Day, BASF India Limited reached out to iVolunteer to set up a stall at their two office locations in Turbhe, Navi Mumbai in order to promote volunteering.  Through this they wanted to introduce the concept of volunteering among their employees. The activity was aimed towards the employees of BASF India Limited.

iVolunteer had set up a stall wherein various volunteers from different capacities of BASF India Limited visited and were orientated about iVolunteer and its various activities. For this, three hand-on activities were organized to give volunteers an exposure to simple volunteering engagement. The hands-on activities were as follows:

1. Seed- Ball Making: It is an environment friendly method and the main objective was to make people aware of the quicker and cost-effective method to reclaim the lost green cover of our environment. Green chilly seeds were used to make seed balls.
2. Thank You Card Making: In our everyday life we usually fail to say thank to people who help us in our routine tasks, like the security guard at the gate or the pantry boy who serves tea. Thus, writing a thank you card for those who have helped us or made our day-to-day life easy is one of the easiest and simplest forms of volunteering. Volunteers made thank you cards for security guard, pantry boy, gardeners, etc.
3. Paper Bag Making: The main objective of making paper bag is to recycle waste newspaper in to Paper Bags. The 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle has become the need of the hour and as a responsible citizen of our country we need to learn the art of recycling and help reduce waste.

A total of thirty-one volunteers participated and showed interest for the volunteering activities, out of which volunteers enjoyed Seed-Ball and Paper Bag Making activity the most. Overall it was a nice experience as people enjoyed the spirit of volunteering. Volunteers were interested in knowing more about iVolunteer and how we serve volunteering in different locations and in different ways.