by Naji Sakhita

22 May 2008

Damascus, Syria: The climate is in constant change and whoever watched the movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' by Al Gore knows what we are going through and what the world is facing in the next few years. This was the main reason behind my application to become a UNV volunteer.

My specialization may seem to be more theoretical and my duties might be far away from the typical image of volunteering – but I am still a volunteer. I am an Information Technology Volunteer, and I work to engage people in environmental issues through the means of these technologies.

Technology is often seen as a main factor in environmental degradation, but through our project we try to publicize environmental challenges and raise awareness among youth and the public about climate change through our national climate change website: www.inc-sy.org.

The environment is something related to each one of us, it is the thing that gathers us together as brothers and sister of humanity. It is the environment that carries us and gives us the reasons to survive. When I was a child, my father taught me a proverb: "Treat people the way you like to be treated". But I see that our environment gives us the best while we burden it with the worst.

Volunteering is not a career, but it is a curriculum and a culture we must continue to spread. The people of Syria are known as extremely hospitable; volunteering is in our traditions and is one of the deep rooted principles of our culture that we must revive and teach to our neighbours, friends, and family.

I believe that together we can make a difference. Just like trees standing next to each other make a forest, we accomplish more when we stand together for a cause, like we did on the tree planting day.

When I first applied to UNV, I never expected to have this family atmosphere. The work with the UNV Programme team has taught me lessons of fraternity and enriched my volunteer spirit, which is also what I felt during the planting activity on the UN forest day. We have been working, planting and sweating together and I am so glad that with each tree that we put in this dear soil, our smiles were reflected from the earth to our lips.