Er­line An­drews

Ian Ben­jamin, who re­cent­ly as­sumed the chair­man­ship of the re­spect­ed char­i­ty Unit­ed Way T&T, had been deeply af­fect­ed by state at­tor­ney Dana See­ta­hal's shock­ing death, as had many of us.

The tragedy re­in­forced in him a con­vic­tion that he shared with a small au­di­ence at Unit­ed Way's of­fices on Ed­ward St in Port-of-Spain the day af­ter See­ta­hal's fu­ner­al. He'd been in at­ten­dance.

"Her pass­ing has got to mean some­thing for us. We know what we are re­quired to do. It's in our hands. It's as sim­ple as that," said Ben­jamin, who is al­so an at­tor­ney, en­cour­ag­ing his lis­ten­ers to par­tic­i­pate in Unit­ed Way's sec­ond an­nu­al Na­tion­al Day of Car­ing on May 18. More than 2,000 em­ploy­ees from var­i­ous com­pa­nies vol­un­teered for char­i­ta­ble projects across the coun­try.

Vol­un­teerism may be the key to solv­ing the coun­try's prob­lems, Ben­jamin said lat­er in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian.

"If you're a vol­un­teer, by de­f­i­n­i­tion you're not think­ing of your­self on­ly," he said. "You're do­ing some­thing and giv­ing of your­self and your re­sources for some­one else, so that it gets you in­to the mind set of 'oth­er peo­ple'.

"And once you get a mo­men­tum, a dy­namism about work­ing to­geth­er with oth­er peo­ple for build­ing a bet­ter com­mu­ni­ty, then you're go­ing to build a bet­ter so­ci­ety, and then you're go­ing to build a bet­ter coun­try," he said. "Think­ing about oth­er peo­ple–that's the essence of vol­un­teerism."

Unit­ed Way has been op­er­at­ing in T&T for 13 years. It's part of an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion that has an 127-year-old his­to­ry and is the biggest pri­vate­ly fund­ed non-prof­it in the world, op­er­at­ing in 41 coun­tries and rais­ing bil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly, which it dis­trib­utes to a va­ri­ety of caus­es and char­i­ties.

Unit­ed Way T&T raised more than $4 mil­lion last year that it dis­trib­uted to 24 or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing those work­ing in adult lit­er­a­cy, youth ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, and sup­port­ing the vic­tims of do­mes­tic abuse.

"It's trans­for­ma­tive," said Ben­jamin about what it means to an NGO to have an­oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion fundraise on their be­half. "Be­cause if an NGO has to take its lim­it­ed re­sources, do its front­line work, as well as raise mon­ey, then re­al­ly you're stretch­ing in­to break­ing point."

The key to Unit­ed Way's op­er­a­tion is its col­lab­o­ra­tions with cor­po­ra­tions, who do­nate di­rect­ly and en­cour­age do­na­tions and vol­un­teer­ing from em­ploy­ees.

More and more busi­ness­es are see­ing the im­por­tance of be­ing a good cor­po­rate cit­i­zen, said Ger­vase Warn­er, a Unit­ed T&T di­rec­tor and the CEO of Neal & Massy Hold­ings, who or­gan­is­es the Na­tion­al Day of Car­ing.

"We recog­nise that we have an oblig­a­tion as a large cor­po­ra­tion like Neal & Massy to par­tic­i­pate in the com­mu­ni­ty," he said. "We give away $6 mil­lion a year from our foun­da­tion. Most cor­po­ra­tions in Trinidad have some form of en­gage­ment with the com­mu­ni­ty around them. It's just part of do­ing good busi­ness."

Fa­cil­i­tat­ing vol­un­teerism ul­ti­mate­ly helps with the bot­tom line, said Ben­jamin.

"Every­body who has a job wants ful­fil­ment," he said, "and if they have a de­sire to be a vol­un­teer and their com­pa­ny fa­cil­i­tates that, they are a hap­pi­er, more pro­duc­tive, more dis­ci­plined em­ploy­ee. It's an im­per­cep­ti­ble ad­di­tion to the bot­tom line for any com­pa­ny."

Be­sides hav­ing com­pa­nies or­gan­ise teams of em­ploy­ees to take part in the Na­tion­al Day of Car­ing, Unit­ed Way al­so us­es a stand­ing or­der sys­tem where­by em­ploy­ees can give from their salaries with­out think­ing about it.

Unit­ed Way has built up a good deal of trust all over the world. Part of the rea­son for this is that it makes sure the funds are giv­en to re­li­able non-prof­its that Unit­ed Way as­sess­es it­self. It then makes sure funds are used for the pur­pose they were in­tend­ed.

Unit­ed Way al­so pro­vides train­ing and ad­vice to help strength­en the non-prof­its they work with.

"You will find that the mo­ment you try to tack­le any kind of so­cial is­sue that has a cer­tain amount of in­tractabil­i­ty, then a pin prick ap­proach is not go­ing to have any ef­fect at all," said Ben­jamin. "You will be spin­ning your top in mud. So you need to be able to strength­en an NGO's ca­pac­i­ty."