Volunteering to Share with and Learn from the Community

In recent years, volunteer work has been instrumental in addressing inequalities, fostering well-being, and driving sustainable development. In this context, community foundations go a step further by enabling people to learn alongside their communities while promoting local development. 

The Comunidad Foundation, located in the state of Morelos, is dedicated to promoting, strengthening, and advancing community development through collaboration with grassroots groups and civil society organizations. It primarily does so through its Education, Community Development, Gender Equity, Youth, Environment, Resilient Communities, and Construction funds, as well as its managed funds.

To promote philanthropy and shared responsibility among different sectors, Fundación Comunidad offers opportunities for volunteer work that are tailored to diverse abilities and needs, while also fostering initiatives aimed at transformation and the common good; this is how the Creando Comunidad program came into being. 

Miriam Miranda Trujillo, coordinator of Communications, Outreach, and Volunteering at Fundación Comunidad, maintains that volunteering is a fundamental part of sustainable community development—a driving force that has a positive impact on communities. 

The "Creando Comunidad" initiative promotes a culture of volunteerism through three programs that allow people to get involved in their own communities and grassroots groups: 

• • Academic Volunteering. This program is aimed at students seeking to fulfill their community service requirements and complete professional internships within organized civil society organizations. Through this program, in addition to sharing their knowledge, students enhance their skills and learn from the community itself. For example, industrial design students participated in the Equity Fund to help women artisans and entrepreneurs improve their retail spaces. Over the past five years alone, nearly 50 students have participated as volunteers.   

• • Independent Volunteering. Aimed at anyone who wants to contribute their time and skills. After filling out a short form on its website, Fundación Comunidad matches volunteers’ interests and skills with local funds, grassroots groups, or civil society organizations in Morelos. During the pandemic, volunteers in this program collaborated with and supported grassroots groups in using digital tools and social media to promote their products.   

• • Corporate Volunteering. It creates opportunities for collaboration with companies that wish to address their social responsibility by promoting volunteerism among their employees. Partnerships are established based on the potential for collaboration that exists between the foundation itself or grassroots groups. Following the September 2017 earthquake, a Mexico City-based company participated in the reconstruction of homes in the town of Michapa. Recently, a passenger transportation company, together with a group that organizes guided tours, organized a cleanup effort in the Zempoala area. 

“Many of the people who have been here leave with a new perspective; they discover another side of giving. In a way, we show them a different way of relating to people in the communities; the volunteers come to share and are learning,” explains Miriam. 

 

One of the biggest challenges volunteers face is understanding the community’s everyday language so they can interact and communicate without a position of privilege, building horizontal relationships to share and learn together. Open listening is essential in these spaces to understand that every community has its own knowledge, different ways of interacting, and ways of managing resources to decide where it wants to go, and in this sense, the role of volunteers is to provide support, Miriam notes. 

The time, effort, and knowledge that volunteers contribute are extremely important because, even though they can be quantified in financial terms, volunteer work drives local development and improves living conditions; at the same time, volunteers gain insight into other realities, foster empathy, and contribute to the resilience of communities.   

Learn more about Fundación Comunidad, in the state of Morelos.