Willingness to involve self in any job is volunteerism whereas creating and maintaining value of any particular skill/trade is professionalism. In present day world competition is high. The uppermost importance of human being is staying alive and the second most importance is keeping others alive i.e. primarily your family and then others. Necessities are greater than ever before. We need money for everything. Where does money come from? Products. Yes, for the exchange of products we get money. The product’s value should be greater so that it sells well in the market. We need to enhance the value of our trade/skill everyday. By doing this we become professional and its quality becomes our professionalism.

We humans basically have two hungers: Mental and Physical. Volunteerism addresses and satisfies mental hunger and physical hunger gets satisfied by professionalism. Both the components are supplementary to each other. Human life becomes happier and fulfilled only when those two basic components work in perfect harmony. In the Canadian’s case, she combined her volunteerism in professionalism whereas in my example professionalism was missing.

The ethics

1. Involve yourself immediately whenever such need arise where you feel strongly that you could not merely remain a spectator. Do not wait for someone to ask for that. Just lend your helping attitude to the situation/cause.

2. Don’t ruin your career/job instead merge serving attitude in your life.

3. There should be selfless desire (willingness), not the ego i.e. you enjoy what you do.

There is no hard and fast rule. Whenever you observe those 3 factors knowingly or unknowingly, you become a volunteer.

For any comments and suggestions: Santosh Timilsina santmail@mos.com.np http://www.santoshko.info