Volunteer Recognition Day

Annual celebration of people who selflessly benefit the lives of others is Volunteer Recognition Day.

Many people say that altruism is really a myth, that it doesn't exist and that no one is capable of anything unless their own self-interest.

But even the heaviest of skeptics can find it hard to explain why anyone with their right mind would choose to travel to the poorest parts of the world, where hunger, disease, and war ravages the population and death is as common as life, helping to take care of orphans.

Or why a laid-back middle-class citizen would choose to spend his afternoons teaching neglected teenagers how to read in the dirtiest, most gang-ridden part of town. Or why any nurse would risk her life to take care of wounded soldiers in the field.

The volunteers will be different for each person, but they are all superheroes in real life in the world. Furthermore, although they don't request to be paid for all of their work, they certainly deserve our utmost respect and appreciation, which is exactly Volunteer Recognition Day.

History of Volunteer Recognition Day

People who risked their own safety to help others without expecting anything in return have been around for hundreds and thousands of years. Ben Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, was also the man who created the first volunteer fire brigade that helped put out many fires in Philadelphia.

Florence Nightingale, often called the mother of modern nursing, was as heroic as any soldier fighting in the Crimean War as she tended to the wounded. Popular Whodunit author Agatha Christie volunteered as a nurse in the Red Cross Hospital Volunteer Relief Team in Torquay from 1914 to 1917 when her husband Archie was fighting in World War I.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, a Catholic nun, spent most of her life in India caring for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis. Recently, many Hollywood stars like Angelina Jolie have made many trips to many poor parts of the world to understand the problems of the people living there and find ways to help them. All these people, and many others, have changed the world forever for the better.

How to celebrate Volunteer Recognition Day

There are many ways you can celebrate this day in a way that honors those who have devoted most of their lives to helping the poor the world has forgotten. The best way is to find ways you can help someone, of course, this doesn't mean you should give up everything and move to a third world country.

No matter where you live, there are people around you who have been treated badly in life, and who need things that most of us take for granted, such as a roof over our heads, pants shirt, a hot meal or just a little love and care. This doesn't just apply to humans, animal shelters are always overflowing with lonely animals that just need someone to cuddle.

So choose a special cause close to your heart and spend this day helping others. Chances are, you'll find this experience more rewarding than any salary ever offered.