A Guide for the Volunteers

Before you read on you must know what’s your catch…

   The participants at this forum, (that may be you yourself) are students with youthful raw ideas and an infant experience of realities of life.

                  Kashi Utkarsh thus provides a platform for these bright, youthful ideas to be bled with rigors of a hands-on practical experience.Thus, enabling them to become progressively in sync with the realities so that these humanists move out well prepared and with a hardened realistic and practical vision. These could then move out into individual spheres better equipped to engineer a revolution towards a more equitable society.

Well here is a small guide for you…….

1.      Kashi Utkarsh envisages a revolution in the lives of all those people who are associated with it engineered by the people themselves. Hence, the job of its volunteers becomes limited to motivating the people towards their goal and creating awareness as well as providing a sense of direction to the people in the Bastis or messes or the volunteers themselves.

2.      So, the foremost requirement in a volunteer is that he/she should treat everyone as friend rather than guide or father to the people he is working for. He/ She must be able to identify himself/herself as one among the people themselves and not as someone external out to help them. Hence the volunteer should not provide any charity directly to the people, which would only heighten their lack of self-respect and inferiority complex hampering the long term objective. However this does not rule out providing any specific help partnered with desire and contribution of the person themselves in time of emergency.

3.      The volunteer must understand that for a revolution to occur, say in a Basti or for some substantial change in lifestyle there, the gestation period is atleast 20-25 years. Hence, we must not strive for immediate results or any visible changes in lifestyle during our work at Kashi Utkarsh which would ordinarily be merely 4-5 years. Hence, the volunteer must treat themselves merely as worker and not try to assume the role of manager or architects of a social revolution. This only leads to frustration among the volunteer s as well as a deviation from the normal course of action to merely wasteful and undesirable plans or projects meant only to gain immediate recognition hampering the overall goal.

4.      Another prerequisite desired among the volunteer s is that they should refrain from treating themselves as belonging to a great class arising from the feeling of doing some benevolent work. They must consider themselves as just any ordinary person working towards self-satisfaction, lowering ego, thereby strengthening the resolve to continue this work in the future as well as after passing out from BHU.

5.      The foremost requirement in a volunteer is patience. Since, the results of their work come after a long time, the tendency to get uneasy and frustrated and not getting the desired results have to be curbed immensely. This can be done with a person possessing loads of patience as well as a steely grit and resolve towards the larger goal as well as a complete faith and trust in the capacity and skill of himself/ herself as well as the fellow teammates. The volunteers should also be able to respect and appreciate the fellow teammates and try to gain maximum from their efforts and experiences, so this healthy tradition of Kashi Utkarsh can continue for many years to come.

One of the important requirements is that the volunteer of Kashi Utkarsh must understand that his efforts are going to lead to a great change in someone’s life and also to his own satisfaction. So it is necessary for him/ her not to will for any financial assistance from Kashi Utkarsh for him/ herself. More specifically no allowance(s) will be made for transport, fooding etc. to the volunteers from KU funds.