International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development is celebrated every year internationally all over the world on 5th of December. This event celebration provides a great chance to all the individual volunteers and organizations of volunteers to show their contributions at the international, national and local levels in order to get the Millennium Development Goals.
Every year celebration of the international volunteer day helps the thousands of volunteers to get mobilized and works very intimately with the partners as well as the government organizations to set up the program for national volunteers in order to make the organizations which can promote and carry on the local volunteerism in all countries. Volunteers, using online volunteering service, works in group and take an action for the continuous human development by promoting the development organizations activities over the Internet. Thousands of people are working as a volunteer daily using their online or on-site resource in order to maintain the peace and human development as well as to attain the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals).
International Volunteer Day is celebrated yearly worldwide on 5th of December with the great hope of a better world. It focuses on promoting the awareness and appreciating the individual volunteers as well as volunteer organizations. It aimed to recognize the commitment of volunteers in order to get people informed about the effects of volunteering on the harmony and continuous human development.
To trace the evolution of NGO culture in Kashmir over the past few decades, we need to briefly look at the kind of society that has existed and exists in Kashmir today. The infusion of this concept of NGO into Kashmir is even more recent. Kashmir has traditionally been a plural society, which manifests itself in the concept of Kashmiriyat. Kashmir has traditionally been a very close-knit religious society. As a result, the need for NGOs in the social sphere had never been felt. For example, an orphan in the pre-1989 period would immediately be adopted by one of his relatives or neighbors in accordance with their religious and social practices; hence the need for orphanages was never felt.
This phenomenon was so wide-spread that every family in Kashmir could be called an NGO, since it had always played this role. Thus, very few social welfare or voluntary organizations had existed in Kashmir before the period of militancy.
The period after 1989 marked a watershed for NGOs in Kashmir and their need was deeply felt for the first time. With violence increasing, the number of casualties and victims of violence continued to rise. Over the next few years, with the Indian army attacking militants and their supporters, Kashmiri society began to feel the brunt of militancy on their lives. Normal life in Kashmir being disrupted with curfews for many days at a stretch became a common occurrence. Life came to a virtual standstill at the height of the militancy as food and other supplies were disrupted, curfews were imposed, offices began to be closed down and the tourist and other businesses that Kashmir had thrived upon began to be adversely affected. With this came the need for someone to help ease the lives of the common people.
On the national and international level, there is no dearth of NGOs working in different fields. In view of the improving governance position in Kashmir, the socio-political situation is conducive for more NGOs to enter Kashmiri society.
The achievements and victory of NGOs in various fields and the brilliant work done by them in specific areas are no doubt an incredible task that has helped to meet the changing basic needs of the social system. Still, in spite of its achievements in various fields, NGOs are facing different types of problems which differ from organization to organization, region to region and from place to place. In this position, the present paper attempts to discuss some of the general problems faced by the NGOs and to provide some remedies to overcome these problems.
It is supposed that the personnel working in NGOs may be of personnel working in such organizations are a sense of devotion and assurance and interest in the social services. NGOs earlier were supposed to be served by unpaid social workers imbued with the courage of service and did not need any special education or training. But the present trends that are having a professional education are not paying attention to work with NGOs. Their vision has been altered and is interested to work in urban areas only. For that reason, it is very hard to get trained persons who are either trained or willing to work in the rural society where the majority of NGOs work. Furthermore, these professionally trained persons have a high opportunity in terms of salaries, status, opportunities for their growth in the career of their choice. Moreover, due to lack of funds NGOs cannot able to spend some more funds for giving training to the personnel employed in the organization. A small number of NGOs is in fear of personnel who may transfer to another big NGO after taking training from it.
NGOs are the ones who really propose to care and protect the uncared sections and the people at the bottom of the social stratum. Ours is developing state which requires these types of committed, devoted, enthusiastic and dedicated organizations for the development of the state. So, the government, administrators, rulers, the leaders, the donors, the politicians and the people should support these organizations and help them to solve their problems at the grass-root level than only their services are definitely and undoubtedly creditable in the upliftment of the rural poor.
