Once every other week all the way up until the Big Volunteer Week, we will highlight the values of Serve the City (Humility, Compassion, Respect, Courage, Love, Hope) . Each value will be represented by different people from diverse cultures, backgrounds, professions and ages.
Today we present a story of Compassion:
On paper, Serve the City is an organization that gathers volunteers to help serve people’s needs, but in practice it is so much more than that. It is a community of people discovering each other, and caring about each other. Christel Lamère Ngnambi, a long time volunteer with Serve the City, explains that “any time you go, even if it’s the twentieth time, you always discover something new, someone new, a new need, a new place, a new skill you have in yourself.”
Christel started volunteering with Serve the City in 2006, back when the organization was still young. He saw a poster in the metro which sparked his curiosity, so he and a friend decided to check it out. He volunteered for a few days and has been involved ever since.
He’s been involved as a team leader, taking groups to volunteer, and two years in a row he was in charge of the events team, organizing the Street Party. He’s also helped with translation and with contact with the authorities.
What keeps Christel coming back is “the vision of something bigger” that Serve the City provides to people, especially through the relationships.
About helping those in need, Christel says : “Just the fact that we’re meeting them, and for them to know that we’re there for their interests, and that we do that for free, I think it switches a light in them…they see that there’s more to life than their problem, that people are interested in them.”
Christel says that Serve the City has clearly opened his eyes to needs around him, it has made him more compassionate, less prone to judge people. He loves that Serve the City is so flexible, and that it provides for ways to volunteer around a busy schedule, and he says that “you will go back home wealthier, richer than when you got there.”
“I would say, Serve the City is a wonderful adventure of discovery and compassion. And you discover yourself, sometimes even more than you discover other people.”
Join us for the Big Volunteer Week to meet Christel and other amazing people!
