Everyday we consciously or ‘unconsciously’ volunteer. You would ask, why the word ‘unconsciously’? Nigeria is one great country still developing in terms of volunteerism with about 70% population, inspite of their involvement in one form of volunteering or the other, fail to neither recognize it nor understand the concept of volunteerism.
Nigeria is delimited with challenges such as Poverty, Poor access to quality education, unemployment and lack of basic health facilities. However, in our limitation lie our strengths and opportunities to tap into our vibrant human resources available at our disposal.
About 5.8% of the Nigerian labour force is currently unemployed which has translated into increased poverty in the lives of the people. The question now is; how can Nigeria strategically utilize her human resources to better her economy and improve the standard of living of her citizenry?
Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) has demonstrated that volunteerism is a strategic tool for improving standard of living, strengthening educational delivery systems and effectively responding to HIV/AIDS scourge.
With 50 years experience in Nigeria delivering services through her international volunteers and partners for the development in our educational sector, health and the supporting of income generating activities in securing the livelihood of the people, shows that Nigeria can thrive in development challenges if we are committed to what we call our own and investing our skills for a positive change.
Arising to her responsibility through the active involvement of government, public, private and civil society sectors, Nigeria can adopt volunteering as one of the tools to tackling unemployment, poverty, health lapses and social vices. The culture of civic responsibility and patriotism needs to be imbibed for a successful application of this tool to effectively intervene in terms of service delivery and for economic growth.
Our human resources should not be allowed to wallow in ignorance and abject poverty in queue for when over-populated labour market will manifest with job opportunities. Individuals can be better productive if there is increase in sensitization on volunteerism as well as active involvement of the government.
Just like our tapped petroleum resources, let us arise today and explore our untapped human resources for volunteerism and for our development.
u very right here! Nigeria need to tap into the human resource 4 development!
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