Making “SOMEDAY” Happen

Honestly, I've lived a life where I have volunteered very little. I mean the most I've ever volunteered for was helping pack donations for typhoon victims. Actually being part of a team for a project meant to aid a community was something that did not happen to me until last year. However, my inaction did not mean pure indifference towards worldly issues. I’d like to think myself as someone at least mildly socially aware. I mean a feel a real uncomfortable feeling when I see the visible, tangible forms of these issues in our world: seeing beggars down the streets; innumerable rows of shanties; smog enveloping the air; and many more problems.  This persistent imagery of social ills has always disturbed me. Yet all I did before was think to myself that someday in the future I will be able to help change things. Yet as the years went on that “someday” just didn't seem to come. I would imagine how it would be like to actually help, yet nothing ever came of it. I didn't have any initiative before. Yet as I got older I came to realize that I had to make “someday” happen—it had to happen now. And so at the moment I am at a point in my life where I can make more meaningful choices and actually aid people in ways I've not done before.

Honestly, this is just the beginning so I don’t have many stories to tell. I can briefly talk about lifestyle changes I've been trying to commit to, but I feel like I’m at a point in my life where I can’t really reduce the consumption of my household to a degree I believe is adequate. In general, it is only now that I am actually finding opportunities to be slightly more socially active as I grow more aware of issues and as the root problems of these issues reify in my head. So what am I doing now? I guess I am looking for opportunities to volunteer and looking for the concrete ways I can directly help people. Volunteering in BCYF is probably the first extra-curricular I am doing that’s development related. Hopefully, this won’t be the last.

Contributed by:. Nicolas Santiago, a 4th Year Development Studies student from Ateneo de Manila University

Disclaimer: The author of this story permitted us to post his story online. The photo used here was uploaded through Facebook.