What would happen if a parliament member of any political party, left wing or right wing, was elected president of a prestigious NGO? What sense would there be left for an NGO if it lost its independence? For the greater public, non-government guarantees non-bias, response and proposal from the social tissue or civil society to unjust inequalities. Organized civil society looks for peace as a result of social justice, equality between humans without distinction of origin, but with distinction that stems from personal responsibility and in a freedom that guarantees efficiency.
That altruism and generosity is what attracts candidates to humanitarian social volunteering and admiration, sympathy and assistance by people of all conditions.
Non- government doesn’t prevent people from belonging to the government in power.
Neither does it mean that NGO members, social volunteers and those who work in cooperation projects don’t have political ideas or religious options. They are citizens of the most committed, who know distinguish between one political position and the other, between an option and the opposite, guided by the best service to the community and to the people without the obligation to belong to any fixed political or religious group.
Social volunteering differenciates from other altruism or beneficence methods in five fundamental characteristics: non-profit, or not expecting anything back from the service given; continuity in the assigned service; freedom of choice for the activity the volunteer likes the most; to participate in a project within a serious and responsible humanitarian organization that demonstrates knowledge and respect of people and their cultures.
Thus, social volunteering departs from assistencialism, volunteerism, from motivations based on curiosity for the poor and those who suffer disgrace, and from proselytism. Social volunteering provides the means for keeping company, searches for the origins of injustice, denounces them and suggests alternative proposals without confusing reality with wishful thinking, nor does it utiliza humanitarian organizations.
In a certain way, it’s dangerous that NGO’s have become fashionable and trendy. Enterprises, politicians and religious groups crave them because they lack the trait that most distinguishes social volunterring: not expecting anything back and the satisfaction of having exercised human solidarity. In order to transform a society they reject, social volunteers begin with their own transformation first.

José Carlos García Fajardo
Profesor of Contemporary Social and Political Thought. CCS Director
fajardoccs@solidarios.org.es