"No time is the No. 1 reason for not volunteering according to a recent survey here. Yet some do make the time." ALICIA ONG looks at volunteers in this UN International Year of Volunteers.

Once volunteerism had the image of being the preserve of the more well-heeled and leisurely - like tai-tais and expatriate housewives who wanted to spend their time in meaningful non-profit endeavours. Not anymore. Charities and other community service organisations report that Singaporean and permanent resident volunteers at 9.3 per cent have a slight edge on foreign resident volunteers at 8.7 per cent. And volunteers come from all walks of life ranging from students to ordinary housewives to senior citizens.

Heartwarmingly, some are unwitting volunteers. If a good deed needs doing, there are people who will do it quietly without pomp and fanfare. According to Yael Caplin, senior executive for resource development at the National Volunteer Centre, accurate statistics on volunteerism is often difficult because this particular group of people sees nothing special about their good deeds. Said Caplin, "In fact, two new Centre staff only realised that they have been involved in volunteer work on their own only after they joined us!"

Nevertheless, going by the results of the National Survey on Volunteerism 2000, volunteer participation is still low: a mere 9.3 per cent of the 1,529 people polled compared with 56 per cent in the United States, 48 per cent in the United Kingdom and 25 per cent in Japan. These figures fuel ongoing discussion about the civic-mindedness of Singaporeans and the National Volunteer Centre, opened last July, appears to have its work cut out for it.

The most common reason given by about three out of four respondents for not doing any voluntary work is the lack of time. Yet the range of possibilities for volunteerism is almost limitless and the demands on one's time need not be onerous. There are activities to suit different levels of skills and ages with timings to suit all manner of job situations.

There are volunteers who read for the visually handicapped, hairdressers who go to old folks homes to give free hair cuts, housewives who give time to prepare a free or subsidised meals for the elderly and indigent, people who make home visits or perform little chores for those without a support network, people with good listening skills who man the various hotlines in the city, pet-owners of the Singapore Kennel Club who bring their pets on home visits as part of pet-assisted therapy, and those who teach basic English to adults who never got a chance to get an education.

Dr TT Ang and his team of three assistants visit Bedok Lions Nursing Home to give free acupuncture treatment to the elderly residents. Nancy Lim, 43, a Lions Club member and a fellow volunteer says that response to the treatment has been good and the residents appreciate their efforts. For Lim, the best part of the experience is "when an elderly person responds to the treatment and becomes a happier person because their pain has subsided. There is a grateful look in their eyes and all this motivates us to continue our activities."

In an attempt to involve more students in community service, schools now do more aggressive promoting of volunteerism through the Community Involvement Programme which mandates that each student must do six hours of community service per academic year. Still a relatively new programme, the kinds of activities tend to be the more traditional walkathons, flag days, picking litter, visiting homes and fund-raising.

Given even this minimal involvement with community service, there are some unhappy parents who believe that volunteer work should be the choice of the individual. One young teacher said that his students often sign up for a few school or community events just to chalk up enough volunteering hours without realising the significance and potential of what they are doing.

Lee Shu-Lyn, 27, president of Youth Challenge, a voluntary youth organisation, juggles her volunteer commitments with a job as a full-time private banker and being the mother of a toddler. She feels that getting more young people to be involved with community service activities has to do with nurture and the values and priorities set by family and peers. She observed that many young people join to make new friends as well as meet the opposite sex.

Youth Challenge's recruitment strategies include endorsements by schools and popular local artistes. Television stars such as Sharon Au, Vivien Tan and Steven Lim act as youth ambassadors, giving talks in schools to share their own volunteer experience and encourage young people to get involved with Youth Challenge's work. The celebrities who are often role models for young people are picked for their image and good attributes, such as martial arts practitioner Vincent Ng who is qualified to talk about the benefits of good discipline.

In fact, getting youths to volunteer is not the problem; getting them to stay and commit beyond the immediate is. Said Lee, "Usually school work and other pressures cause some to fall out. There is a general sense that community service activities are of a 'lower priority' because of a value system that says don't be kay poh (busy body). Parents might sometimes be the instigators of these feelings."

One group that staunchly believes in the positive and powerful effect of guidance and nurturing is the Retired and Senior Volunteer Programme (RSVP) Singapore, which encourages people above 40 to be more active in their communities through volunteer service such as mentoring programmes for young people, encouraging fellow senior citizens to be IT literate, and partnership programmes with the Institute of Health, National Library Board, and other corporations.

Its volunteers are older men and women of all races, religions and political beliefs, many of whom are highly skilled and experienced. Its president, Dr Philbert Chin, said, "There has been a steady flow of applications for membership. Soon we intend to go a step further, with 'specific recruitment'. That means recruitment with a specific purpose, beginning with the recruitment of volunteers for the Mentoring Programme."

As a volunteer activity, fund-raising for the various charities is always appreciated and always ongoing. Last year, the very small Mexican community raised an impressive $685,000 for local charities, earning special mention by President S. R. Nathan at the launch of International Year of the Volunteer last December.

There are different levels of volunteering with different levels of commitment. Some forms of volunteering call for a more sustained commitment such as having to undergo a period of training and agreeing to duty slots on a fairly regular basis. Others are more ad hoc, with volunteers called on as and when needed. Volunteers who have a sustained commitment are harder to find but are not unknown.

Volunteering one's time and skill be it on a regular or sporadic basis takes a bigger spirit of giving than just dropping money into a box, buying a donation ticket or sponsoring someone for a charity walk or jogathon. It has nothing to do with age and the old are as equipped to volunteer as the young.

Retired civil servant Robert Chia, 71, has been enriching his retirement years by helping out in nursing homes and befriending stroke patients. He got involved with the Home Nursing Foundation when friends asked if he wanted to try something new after he retired at 55. Chia agreed to give it a shot and even recruited wife Suzie to share in the activity. For the next 15 years, twice a week, Chia and his wife helped out in various homes until their first grandchild was born. They then decided to take a break to look after the new addition to the family.

Says Suzie, now 64, "I don't think what we've done is anything great compared to many others who have contributed more than we have. We only go to the homes to befriend the stroke patients, help them to do some physiotherapy, but most of all, give them a listening ear. It's the most difficult with new patients, but after a while, when some of them finally manage to feed themselves when they couldn't even raise a spoon to their mouth before, it is certainly heartwarming."

Added Chia, "We are just happy that we are still healthy and able to help others less fortunate than ourselves. But we've also learnt a lot from our time spent volunteering together, especially about the importance of good health and the causes and prevention of the different types of diseases that can afflict us." Chia has been recognised for his volunteerism through five, 10 and 15-year service awards.

There is clearly satisfaction from being a volunteer. Esther Choong Ah Moi, 49, has been a volunteer with Touch S.Com for the last seven years and is still fired up about what she does. She works with intellectually and physically disabled clients at weekly handicraft sessions, aerobic workouts and communications skills classes. "The one thing I enjoy most about being a volunteer is the satisfaction gained from being able to help others and seeing the fruits of my efforts," said Choong.

Perhaps it is a question of personality because those who have volunteered before tend to do it again. Rajan Chettiar, 35, is a lawyer with Allen and Gledhill and has been involved with community service work since 1990 in the Bedok Befrienders project and the Touch Ubi Hostel for the disabled. He is now undergoing training to man a telephone helpline. Says Rajan, "The real challenge is finding the volunteer work that brings immense satisfaction and challenge to me. It was a journey of self-discovery. Volunteer work has made me give thought to the needs and plight of the less fortunate in Singapore. And it's a great way to de-stress."

Peter Ng, 36, a systems analyst, was a Singapore Volunteer Overseas (SVO) who helped to set up a computer network for an Indonesian agency in 1996. Even before his overseas experience, Ng has been an active volunteer with the National Council for Social Service's Student Care Service since 1991. He spends an hour every Saturday afternoon with primary school children from broken or disadvantaged homes or who may have mild learning disabilities or social adjustment problems. He says that he continues to work with Student Care Service because he gets to take part in other community service programmes. Among things he has done has been working with young people on probation as part of their rehabilitation and organised outings for the children's families. In September, he will begin his second assignment as a SVO in Bhutan where he will be setting up a local area network system and transferring technical know-how.

Some are spurred to volunteer by personal experience. Like 39-year-old Lee Soh Hong whose efforts made it to the pages of The Straits Times last year. After she lost her mother to cancer in 1999, Lee started a non-profit website and with the help of 55 volunteers, strives to give support to cancer patients and their care-givers at . The group's first offline project will be its tai ji quan support group, where Lee and 12 volunteers teach tai ji to cancer patients to improve their health.

The Cat Welfare Society was formed in response to a 1999 newspaper report about five kittens that were burned alive in a box. Incensed by this and other senseless acts of cruelty, some friends organised themselves and the Society was born. The Society's core belief is that no animal should be denied food, shelter and water nor deserve to be abused or abandoned. Stray cats picked off the streets are cared for and often sterilised at the members' own expense, their personal contribution towards a more compassionate and humane way of controlling the stray population.

There are those who have initiated projects without joining particular organisations. One is Dr Victor Keng, Registrar at the National University Hospital and Specialist Team volunteer who was with the laparascopy training mission in Vietnam last November. Dr Keng started a group to help deaf students with the hope of improving links between the hearing and hearing-impaired. He described it as a difficult uphill process.

They started by training the hearing volunteers in sign language. When they had a pool of competent signing volunteers, they approached the Singapore School for the Deaf. Says Dr Keng, "The persistence finally paid off because very soon the deaf community sat up and took notice of us. We then started community outreach programmes and other adult upgrading programmes."

Choong, too, is not deterred by the setbacks and challenges that come her way. "Sometimes, failure in helping someone or achieving a certain goal after many attempts can be discouraging," she confesses. "I feel disappointed when there is a lack of response, but I know that this is quite inevitable and just pick myself up and go on."

Most of the programmes organised by Action for AIDS are initiated and run by volunteers who aim to give balanced and factual information on AIDS, care and support for people with HIV/AIDS, encourage research into AIDS issues here as well as to end discrimination against people with AIDS and gain community acceptance for them. Said the group's administrator, Benedict Jacob-Thambiah, "Many of our committed volunteers just have a desire to do something for the community and society at large. It would be near impossible to place your finger on the pulse of what motivates them."

Michael Mok (not his real name), 26, is a secondary school teacher and an Action for AIDS volunteer. "As a teacher, I wanted to be better educated on the AIDS issue. I've learnt a lot and I've been able to take that knowledge and bring it to my students. Of course, I'd also hope that in a small, drop-in-the-ocean way, I might have brought some reassurance or peace of mind to someone somewhere."

For volunteering to be a satisfying experience there has to be a good match between volunteer expectations and what is actually required by the helping agency. Volunteers often drop out because the work turns out to be dull, repetitive or takes too much out of them.

Dealing with needs and people problems creates a high burnout rate. Said Michael, "It's difficult when there's bad news, and you're a part of that because you have to share it. Or people tell you they are doing something inadvisable and you tell them not to do it, but you know they are still going to anyway. You feel pretty useless - and you just have to accept that."

To keep himself going, Dr Victor focuses on the larger picture and mission. "Sometimes there is sarcasm, bitterness and if you work long enough with a particular group of people, gossip about yourself starts to emerge. How do you love somebody who looks at you as if you were the one who caused his misfortune, his disability? I do believe that in volunteerism, the spirit of caring is important and the need for a higher calling paramount. People volunteer for different reasons, but caring alone is not enough to help one withstand the trying moments."

One way to prevent the drift of volunteers is through training of volunteer managers and administrators. According to Cheng Shing Meng, senior executive for planning and volunteer development at the National Volunteer Centre, studies have shown that rapport between the volunteer and the volunteer manager is important to volunteer retention. The Centre is developing a training programme to enhance the capacity and capability of organisations to retain volunteers. Another form of volunteer support comes from within their own ranks. Said Rajan of his telephone helpline colleagues, "The equal commitment and enthusiasm displayed by other volunteers drives me further. We motivate each other." Michael, too, appreciates the working environment at his agency. "There is a lot of support from the organisation - from simple things like providing snacks and drinks to knowing that you can get emotional support from other volunteers. The agency recognises that their volunteers are people too and that many of us can't devote ourselves to this full-time, so they are flexible about our schedules."

For Choong, who is currently not working, support comes from knowing that her friends and family understand why she has chosen to do what she does. "Although they themselves do not have time to spare for volunteering their services as often as I do, they give moral support and encouragement."

Every volunteer has his or her own story to tell. Though the work that they do is not readily apparent - it can be dull and repetitive but oh-so-necessary - volunteers do make a difference to the lives of those they choose to interact with. Ng adds matter-of-factly, "There's nothing special about this because it's a way of life for me. It's something natural."

This article was first published in SINGAPORE magazine(May/June 2001) and is the copyright of the Singapore International Foundation, a non-profit,non-government organisation whose mission is "To enable Singaporeans everywhere to think globally, feel Singaporean, be responsible world citizens and foster friendships for Singapore".