Volunteerism Damages

I spent a good amount of time last Saturday pounding soil, lugging sacks of dirt and mixing cement for the GK Build Activity at Ambulong in Batangas. I did about 4 batches. One batch is composed of 1 sack of cement, 3 sacks of sand, 3 sacks of aggregates and about two pails of water.

I didn't learn that at school, by the way. What I learned at school is that a good cement mixture is 1:3:2:2.

Anyway, I got some opportunities to snap some photos in-between mixing cement.




Volunteerism is alive.

But here's a problem that I see: do the volunteers do more harm than good?

Not all of the volunteers are skilled in mixing cement or laying hollow blocks properly. I saw a lot of the other houses being worked on, and some of them are showing "problems" already: a leaning wall, poor compaction of the cement, gaps here and there. The volunteers have the enthusiasm and the energy, but not the skill and direction.

Several areas, if I were a Quality Control director or a Building Safety specialist, will be for potential rework.

This is one area that the GK volunteer community can improve on. The community needs to identify members who can act as leaders who are knowledgeable in the tasks that needs to be done for a BUILD activity. Organization, logistics and task assignments are key areas for improvement.

Maybe in future GK Builds, I can volunteer as a 'structural consultant' to the other volunteers.