Giving a hand instead of hand-out

Enter Hands On Manila. The brochure says they’re an organization recruiting volunteers to help non-profits and non-governmental organzations. It was therefore wonderful to meet, one afternoon, a phalanx of young business professionals, mostly women, who started the organization.

It was Gianna Montinola’s idea, stirred by a neighbor who told her about Make A Difference, a volunteer organization affiliated with City Cares, a network of city volunteer organizations throughout the United States. Gianna, mother of two and a lawyer, found many of her friends did not have the disposable income to make large charitable contributions but had something else as valuable. They had time to give.

"Two hours a month, that’s the minimum," explains Gianna. "Volunteers can sign up for more but two is the minimum." Once they experience helping others, she adds, they’ll put in more hours and they’ll be committed for the long-term.

In its first year, Hands On Manila signed up over 750 volunteers. Most of the active volunteers are–not surprisingly–women between the ages of 18 to 35. Many are on their first jobs but feel there’s more to life than being a cog in a corporate wheel. Three years later, their volunteers have swelled to 3,000.

Hands On gives every volunteer an orientation and training then sends them to various parts of the city, to organizations that could use some help.

Is your breakfast companion an open tv set and a haggard looking traffic reporter in a chopper telling you the same choke points day after day? Why not bring breakfast instead for yourself and a child abuse survivor at Tahanan Sta. Lucia? Become a Big Sister or Big Brother to an abandoned kid. You’ll get to work with a silly smile on your face.

Do you love animals? The Manila Zoo could use your help: They need some help sweeping and making the place attractive. The compensation is a peck on the cheek from the resident giraffe.

For the nerdy types, the Boy’s Town Center could use help teaching their boys how to use MS word and Excel. If you’re into storytelling, kids at the Museo Pambata would just love to hear your rendition of Cinderella.

Are you the gourmet cook in the family? Pass on your culinary skills to orphaned girls at Holy Family who might use it later to become chefs in their restaurants. Maybe you’re into puttering around the garden. There’s a whole seven-hectare Arroceros Park that gladly welcomes pruners and green thumbs.

From their monthly schedules and orientation, one gets a dizzying array of choices to help make someone else a better person, clean the environment, and renew our age-old custom of bayanihan.

Nicole Fandino, the youngest member of the board, believes volunteerism has a more profound impact in the practice of civic work. "Giving old clothes or donating money are oftentimes an easier way of helping out. But the NGO’s we support should also appreciate the important role volunteers can play in their work." Nicole is alluding to the customary hand-outs which can promote patronage rather than partnership.

She cites the example of volunteer Babette Figuerra, a hairdresser, who decided to give unwed single mothers at the Kaisahang Buhay Foundation courses on hair cutting, hot oil, and hair coloring. Babette inspired the women to think about becoming hairdressers themselves, citing how he learned his craft not through school but from hanging out in a local parlor. Hands On found donors to supply scissors, capes, clips and combs. There was a graduation ceremony and the two best graduates became apprentices at the parlor where Babette works, Tinette & Co. Here was an example of real partnership.

Volunteerism is also a reminder of high school and college days, when students were encouraged to do civic duties. Maricris Olbes, another Hands On board member, remembers the Christmas drives and the Student Catholic Action work she happily participated in in school.

"After college, you have to go out and get a job and then there’s marriage. There was no more time to do this work which gave me then a great feeling." Being part of Hands On is for Maricris a continuation of that interrupted social work.

Male volunteers are harder to come by. Many of the current organizations that Hands On serves are related to nurturing children, a task that our men folk have not been as accustomed to as women. A Habitat for Humanity project to build houses has greater appeal than spending a few hours with a child who has cancer. Perhaps it’s a matter of doubling efforts to snag empathetic, Big Brother types of which there are plenty. Men cook, they garden as well, and are adept with computers too. The psychic and emotional rewards of caring for young ones need to be impressed upon men.

Like any beginning non-profit group, the founding board members got support and their first batch of volunteers from family members, friends and the companies they worked for. Maricris asked her husband Tony, president of Meridian Insurance and almost the whole office, from janitors to the EVP, were at the zoo one day, cleaning the place. They liked the experience so much that they signed up again to paint a mural at an orphanage.

Volunteers undergo an epiphany even with just the requisite two hours a month they are obligated to give, and it starts even before the allotted time. On the appointed morning the name and address of the NGO on their palm pilots seem incongruous. They drive not to a Makati mall or office building but an orphanage that could use a new coat of paint. Instead of facing a client for a sales pitch, they’re facing a child, poverty and maybe despair written on her face. Instead of a Powerpoint presentation, they simply open a book and read to her. Instead of signing on a new client, they give hope and love to a complete little stranger. Instead of What’s-In-It-For-Me, it’s What-Did-I-Give-Back to humankind today. Many of the volunteers testify that their lives have been altered with the simplest act of helping or sharing or just plain caring.

In the Philippines, the economic divide is sharp and contact between social classes are few and this does not bode well. This is where the volunteer plays a crucial role. Seeing how the majority of our countrymen live is the first step to a needed awareness and a resolve to change the present untenable situation. It may be a simple story-telling session for the volunteer, but the accompanying survey of the physical surroundings and a reflection of the disparities hopefully provokes a genuine compassion for our fellowman and a commitment to alleviate the problems besetting the nation.

Get in touch with Hands On Manila at [email protected]