Voluntary work is not an obligation, it is a free choice, and you don’t get money in return for doing it. Volunteering, also, means making an effort to share what we have, with other people, to help them, and improve their situation.
Save the children was created on May 19, 1919, and is one of the largest international organizations. It operates in 125 countries with a network of 28 national and international organisations. It is a non-governmental organization (NGO), which means it is independent of the State and therefore does not receive the funds.
NGOs have different objectives: protection of the environment and the territory, protection of minorities, defence of human rights. Save the Children’s main campaigns concern poverty reduction, the fight against child mortality, and advocacy for the poorest children, such as migrants and refugees; the most excluded and marginalized, such as the disabled, girls, or ethnic and religious minorities. In particular, Save the children works to promote and protect the rights of children and adolescents, by pressuring institutions and governments to place the rights of children at the center of their policies. In Italy, Save the Children has supported the creation of nurseries for children and is strongly active in the awareness of the safe use of the Internet and telephones by children and adolescents.
Among the many campaigns, a new education project was launched in 2010 in Tigray, Ethiopia, one of the poorest regions in the world, with the goal of sending more than 800 children to school to stay home to help their families working in the fields.
Volunteering could be a great experience, especially among teenagers, as it makes them more open-minded, makes people think about, and grow empathy towards those less fortunate than us. It should be tried at least once in a lifetime to really understand how, even small actions, can make someone else’s day, and maybe turn their life around for the better.