Essay - Volunteering Germany by Tizian
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 07 March 2017 10:42
- Written by germany
Voluntary work in Germany – “Die Tafel“
In our country we are more than 80 million people. Many of them work on a daily basis. They go to their workplaces five days a week and make certain amounts of money to feed themselves and their families. In their freetime they do activities they like, for example meeting friends or doing sports. But luckily for our society, a reasonable amount of people spend their freetime working for charitable institutions. There are many possibilities of voluntary work in Germany, for example you can do a “FSJ“ (which is a year spent in a charitable institution without gaining any money) or you can help your regional sports club to be able to offer different activities that get kids off their couches and smartphones. In the course of this text I want to present a project that depends on voluntary work. If there were no people helping this institution, many needy people would have to suffer from hunger way more than they currently do.
The institution that I am talking about is called „Die Tafel“. Founded in Berlin in 1993, nowadays there are more than 2100 places in Germany where poor people can go and find free, eatable food. This food would normally be thrown away by supermarkets, restaurants or individuals, but thanks to this institution, poor people can profit from what is too good to be thrown away. As I already said there are certain places where needy people can go and get this food. The food is distributed by thousands of voluntary workers who simply love to help their fellow human beings. “Die Tafel“ is the perfect example of a non-commercial organisation. They don’t depend on profit or effectivity but on donations, sponsors and, of course, voluntary workers.
On the official website you can read that “Without the voluntary workers the existence of this institution would not be possible“. Of course donations have a great significance: “Die Tafel“ is always happy when a workshop offers to repair one of the 2100 cars for free, but in the end it is all about the people who sacrifice their freetime for helping needy people. In Germany there are, according to the website, over 60000 helpers and everyone of them is needed.
Most people work in stores and issuing offices, where they give food to needy people. To make sure that the people that come there are actually needy they need to show certain documents proving that they are, for example, dependent on governmental support like unemployment pay. In general, this system works quite well, but if there is an individual who cannot prove his need, he will most likely get some food as well. One of the organisation’s basic principles is to help everybody, which again proves that it is non-commercial.
Working for “Die Tafel“ does not only include the distribution of food, but also furthermore the organisation needs licensed drivers for their cars and educated people for the administration. The institution needs every help that it can get, according to their website you can even help by introducing new ideas to improve the processes that are going on within the organisation.
If you don’t want to offer your physical nor your mental abilities, you can still help the organisation in a very convenient way. Every individual goes to supermarkets like “Aldi“ or “Lidl“ from time to time. When you give back your deposit bottles, certain machines offer an option that allows you to donate your bottle refund to charitable organisations like “Die Tafel“. Even if that isn’t voluntary work in its original form, donating money gained from deposit bottles is a voluntary way to help this organisation.
As one can see, there are a lot of ways to get involved: From the distribution of food to driving their cars or managing the processes going on within the organisation. “Die Tafel“ always needs help and helpers. In my opinion this organisation is one of the best and most useful ones in Germany, without wanting to subtract the help that numerous other charitable organisations give to people who need it. I chose “Die Tafel“ as my project because it gives needy people one of the things that they need the most: FOOD. Furthermore, I am very impressed by the fact that the whole organisation is based on donations and voluntarily offered manpower. There are plenty of ways to get involved. From distributing food at the official stores to donating money gained from deposit bottles, every contribution counts.
Written by: Tizian Canizales