Everyone’s doing it. Are you?
Friday 18th September is Do It Day – the one amazing day each year when South Africans take time out to share their energy and skills with good causes around the country. Note it in your diary – this year is going to be the biggest Do It Day yet! Do It Day is an annual call to action event organised and hosted by GreaterGood South Africa and brought to you by The Old Mutual Foundation and other associate sponsors. It’s a day of nation-building that connects South Africans with good causes, to give something back to our communities.
It’s easy to make a difference on Do It Day – all you need to do is sign up online for a project in your city that you’d like to volunteer at and arrive on the 18th September. GreaterGood SA aims to mobilise ‘Team South Africa’ and recruit a record 20 000 volunteers working on 2 000 projects this year, providing a huge range of options, so that everyone will be able to find something that appeals to them. The non-profit organisations registered with GreaterGood SA have loads of jobs that need doing, from painting homeless shelters, to making sandwiches for the hungry and clearing alien vegetation at animal welfare societies.
Do It Day projects are categorised into ‘heart’, ‘head’ and ‘sweat’ projects. An example of a heart project might be reading to the elderly at a care home in your community, whilst a head project might be using your computer skills to create a database or a website for a local organisation. Sweat projects simply require hard work and vary from fixing a roof to creating food gardens.
As we are gearing up for 2010, many of the Do It Day projects will have an urban greening focus this year, so that we can clean up our beautiful country in preparation for the soccer world cup. There will also be a focus on youth development, to get our children off the streets and onto the soccer pitch, and doing something constructive and empowering.
In these challenging economic times, the message of Do It Day rings loud and clear – everyone has something to give – and making a difference doesn’t have to cost you a cent. Do It Day is all about encouraging a culture of volunteering by leveraging the huge pool of human capital resources that are readily available, namely, our time, skills and energy, to uplift our communities.
GreaterGood South Africa sees Do It Day as a powerful, symbolic tool for change, with the potential to promote sustainable, long-term relationships between volunteers and causes and transform mindsets about giving. The event promotes teamwork, motivates staff, demonstrates the virtue of hard work and supports good causes in communities across South Africa.
You can sign up online from 1st July, at www.doitday.co.za, or simply SMS the word ‘Volunteer’ and your name to 33009.
*SMS’s are charged at R1,50. Free SMS’s don’t apply.
Signing up as a volunteer is quick and easy. And if you can’t make the actual day, you can still contribute – we have some ready-made alternatives for you. Just visit the website or contact us on (021) 762 7338 to find out. www.doitday.co.za
