DOHA: They are busy painting the town ‘orange’. No, we are not talking about The Netherlands here, but of men and women, who are busy providing the much-needed assistance at the three venues hosting the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship (Qatar 2015).
Be it a query from a journalist or a spectator looking for directions, they can be seen lending the helping hand with a billion dollar smile.
Step into the lobby of your hotel and chances are you would see them there too. What’s more, they would be speaking in the very language that you would be conversant in.
The reason – Qatar currently is the centre of the universe especially when it comes to diverse cultures and people.
Yes, they are the volunteers for the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship, who can be credited with making the event a hugely successful one.
Imagine, what it would have been like if these 1800 volunteers, who are there to assist you at the Lusail Multipurpose Hall, the Duhail Sports Hall and the Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiya Arena in Al Sadd were not there?
Volunteers are actually the backbone of an event of this magnitude.
In fact, they are so vital for an Olympic event that the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games Organising Committee brought out an Official Report defining the term and their scope. The same was later presented in the form of a symposium titled ‘Volunteers, Global Society and the Olympic Movement’ by Spanish authors Ana Belén Moreno, Miquel de Moragas and Raúl Paniagua in 1999.
The Olympic glossary of the Barcelona Olympics defines the volunteer as “a person who makes an individual, altruistic commitment to collaborate, to the best of his/her abilities in the organisation of the Olympic Games, carrying out the tasks assigned to him/her without receiving payment or rewards of any other nature.”
However, volunteering at major events goes back even further. Their role first appeared at the Lake Placid Winter Games in 1980, with the creation of a volunteer programme involving some 6,000 volunteers.
In fact, during the 2006 Asian Games in Doha the number of the volunteers had reached 16 thousand.
What’s more these were actually shortlisted from 30 thousand applicants, worldwide. During the Arab Games in December 2011, 4,000 volunteers had signed up for the regional multisport event that featured 29 exciting sports and 6,000 athletes and officials from 21 Arab countries.
Earlier that year, during the AFC Asian Cup more than one thousand volunteers signed up for the biggest continental football showpiece. At the Qatar 2015, the volunteers can been seen dawning the official colours of the Championship with hues of orange and grey.
Try and speak to a volunteer about how tough his or her job is and the chances are you would get smile in return and maybe just “I am enjoying it…” sentence.
That’s what the Olympic spirit is all about!The Peninsula
