After trying to engage Chinese volunteers, I think I have the following observation and lesson learned:
There are many gifted people available to be engaged for meaningful course
There are many needs that gifted people can help.
There are need to link them together but how?
Some volunteers are so specialized and not ready to change?
Self-learning, self-motivated and hacker mentality is important.
Diversity of ethos, languages, ideologies of volunteers make collaboration difficult.
1. Engaging volunteers is easy
Describe the task for employee is not that easy, I fear that it is even more difficult for volunteers without knowing much about their background.
Ability of matching the task with the gift of the volunteers is great gift.
Collaboration and need of coordination with all diversity making it even harder.
2. Chinese diaspora speak Chinese
I found many Chinese diaspora are very multilingual and have very high proficiency in English. I also find myself communicate in writing in English is much more easier than in Chinese, even though my English is broken, especially in the academic and professional domains.
3. Volunteers is free
I'm still pondering what Einstein say and Linus Torvads said.
"If there is no price to be paid, it is also not of value." Einstein
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free." Linux Torvads.
Volunteer is not free. Serious volunteers commit and sacrifice their time, which is very valuable. Open source and other free stuff are free for the users to use, but other pay the cost of the labor without or with relatively low compensation to share their skills and time to provide the privileges that other can enjoy.
As NGO, I think we/they should be carefully accountable to their contribution. I don't know what kind of auditing system can audit volunteers resources. I think it is worth to explore. I think NGO should also allow volunteers to have more ownership and privilege of communication and decision making to the clients and also to the NGO.
1. Not to engage volunteer but to inspire what dreams they can own and achieve their dreams.
2. Knowing well the need and the way of self-sustainability or else engaging highly motivated financially independent volunteers.
3. Start from small. Small group and small task.
4. Make good use of social network.
Observation:
There are many gifted people available to be engaged for meaningful course
There are many needs that gifted people can help.
There are need to link them together but how?
Some volunteers are so specialized and not ready to change?
Self-learning, self-motivated and hacker mentality is important.
Diversity of ethos, languages, ideologies of volunteers make collaboration difficult.
Myth and Lesson learned:
1. Engaging volunteers is easy
Describe the task for employee is not that easy, I fear that it is even more difficult for volunteers without knowing much about their background.
Ability of matching the task with the gift of the volunteers is great gift.
Collaboration and need of coordination with all diversity making it even harder.
2. Chinese diaspora speak Chinese
I found many Chinese diaspora are very multilingual and have very high proficiency in English. I also find myself communicate in writing in English is much more easier than in Chinese, even though my English is broken, especially in the academic and professional domains.
3. Volunteers is free
I'm still pondering what Einstein say and Linus Torvads said.
"If there is no price to be paid, it is also not of value." Einstein
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free." Linux Torvads.
Volunteer is not free. Serious volunteers commit and sacrifice their time, which is very valuable. Open source and other free stuff are free for the users to use, but other pay the cost of the labor without or with relatively low compensation to share their skills and time to provide the privileges that other can enjoy.
As NGO, I think we/they should be carefully accountable to their contribution. I don't know what kind of auditing system can audit volunteers resources. I think it is worth to explore. I think NGO should also allow volunteers to have more ownership and privilege of communication and decision making to the clients and also to the NGO.
Where to go from now?
1. Not to engage volunteer but to inspire what dreams they can own and achieve their dreams.
2. Knowing well the need and the way of self-sustainability or else engaging highly motivated financially independent volunteers.
3. Start from small. Small group and small task.
4. Make good use of social network.
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