Volunteer at Netherlands

Volunteer was a new idea to me, after coming to this orange country for two months, I can't tolerate the life of staying at home with only online contact with people. I thought I would enjoy the time staying home, not actually. A Ph.D degree is wasting at home. There should be lots of things that I am capable of doing. For the purpose of knowing more people, or just get to know more about this country, I decided to try finding volunteer opportunities before I can locate a permanent job.

Volunteering, a possible increasing working form in more developed world, means working for free. I wouldn't have thought of this when I have a job. I admire people who would work with his or her full passion, rather for living.It reminds me Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when people satisfy their basic need of living, their higher level needs starts to rise. The need for self-esteem, is the origin of wanting to be of use. I guess for me, although I feel the need for money, but that need is not significant enough to make me to do any work for money. I am just being lazy to pretend that I am hungry about my self-esteem.

Anyway, I approached several places of volunteering work. The first is in Delft. The city of Delft and Mamelodi in South Africa are building the tie of twin cities. Dutch people are helping the local Mamalodi people in music courses, housing development project, and community center design. It is quite related to my background. 40% of the people in Mamalodi speak the language Afrikaan, which is originated from Dutch language due to being the Dutch colony in the history. You just can't believe such a tiny little country with 16 million population at the moment, could have created such large impact in the world history. People from Mamelodi were excited when they are here to visit, since they found they could understand most of the language here.

The other place is ACCESS, an NGO that provide support to the international community in the Netherlands. They would like me to get involved in the Public relations section in their organization. It is amazing how it develops from a family help desk to a NGO with such a wide influence in the international community. I had a pleasant visit yesterday there, and met a lady called Ada. She was from Nigeria, coming with her husband who works in SHELL. They are here for four months, and she has volunteered for around three months. We had a good chat, and I taught her how to use google map. She didn't know it before, and she was happy that she learned something.

However, it is the holiday season still, and my real participation might start after the September. Let's see what will happen after that.