RiseNepal Volunteers, supported by the Global Peace Foundation, members of the Asia Pacific Peace and Development Service Alliance and and United Kingdom NGO Byond, raise a transitional shelter in Kathmandu for victims of the April 25 earthquake that hit central Nepal.

The idea of service has steadily gained ground around the world. While the specific nature, purpose and efficacy of the various non-governmental organizations differ, we might infer that the rise of these civil service organizations represents the importance people place in the value of service to others.

In 2012 in the U.S. alone there were approximately 1.5 million NGOs. In 2010 in India, a country with a population of 1.5 billion, there seemed to be more than 3.3 million NGOs, equaling roughly 1 NGO for every 400 people. In Russia, despite governmental restrictions on NGOs, there was a reported quarter million entities registered in the country in 2008.

Yet, without taking away the tremendous good that they might bring through their respective work, are these solutions headed in the right direction? Is there something that they are working towards that does more than provide a service or fill a need?

These are the kinds of questions we must ask ourselves as people who are working to alleviate poverty, address environmental degradation or serve the sick and the needy; addressing a myriad of challenges that we face as a global community.

In a speech many years ago to a crowd of Service for Peace volunteers, Dr. Hyun Jin Moon challenged the audience to think about service differently, asking:

When you see a homeless man on the street and you don’t know him, you most likely will pass him by without a thought. Or, if perhaps you do know him, or you’ve seen him enough to be familiar – you might think to stop and help him out – to give some money or food or offer some assistance. But what would you do if you stop and see that this homeless man is your brother?

Dr. Hyun Jin Moon addresses the importance of youth and service with volunteers at an environmental clean-up near Kathmandu, Nepal in 2010.

This question gave everyone in the audience pause and it is one that we still need to ask ourselves today.

In a similar vein, this provocative social science experiment asked us to think differently about those who are homeless:

Would You Notice Your Own Family If They Were Homeless?

The vision of ‘One Family Under God’ challenges us to engage in something as seemingly simple as service, differently – as it challenges us to do much of everything we do in life differently. It asks us, how would you approach this need differently if we are, in fact, one family under God? Do we give a man a fish to feed him for a day? Would we do the same if the person was our child, our brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandmother or grandfather?

In ‘One Family Under God’, the natural dynamic of society would be service for one another and for the greater good. Hence, if we serve because we are family, the next question is how can our service transform our current reality into a world of ‘One Family Under God’?

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“Where can peace be found? Can you legislate it? Can you build it through economics, politics, or diplomacy? No. You have to change the hearts of men.

When we live for the sake of others, we are building a new cultural paradigm and breaking down barriers, not with words, but through action. In the process of breaking down those barriers, we transform ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our nation, and eventually the world. This is how you find peace.” 

Dr. Hyun Jin Moon, 2002, Service for Peace Rally, Washington, D.C.

This week the Global Peace Foundation announced that their Mongolia chapter’s online volunteer community, “My Club,” was recognized for “Best Voluntary Activity of 2014” by the Network of Voluntary Organizations at a special program hosted at the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme of Mongolia on International Volunteer Day.

International Volunteer Day is an official United Nations International Day designated to recognize central role of volunteer efforts in securing peace and development.

As the quote above points out, volunteering is not just about tackling a shared social or economic issue, it is about a transformation of the heart. Service is an act that affirms humanity’s connection to each other and taps into a divine ability to put others before oneself.

The Global Peace Foundation-Mongolia has engaged young university students from all parts of the nation in creative projects to address literacy, environmental sustainability, and elder and family care.

Local university student volunteer reads to kindergarten students before naptime in Mongolia.

The eye-catching photo on the report is from the “Desk Book” project. It depicts a university student reading to local kindergarten children right before nap time.

According to the Service for Peace approach, the short time the university student invests is not only about increasing the children’s literacy, but about acknowledging the kinship between she and the children. The simple act of reading to children she barely knows says, “I may not know you, but I care about you, because we are all family.” For the children, it is an affirmation of the larger national and global community that is concerned for them.

Take a moment, 10 minutes, to serve, and reflect on the transformation that occurs, the small piece of peace that emerges as one puts the good of humanity first.

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Bright faces of young volunteers gathered for a youth forum.

Today was an exciting day in Korea. On May 5, Korea celebrates Children’s Day.

For Children’s Day, instead of being at a picnic or amusement park, hundreds of young students gathered at Jeon Nam University – Yeosu Campus to open their youth forum.

The forum focused on the theme “Youth Volunteerism for a Sustainable Marine Environment.” Over the next two days, the students will:

–          learn about the ocean and its related issues,

–          discuss what it means to become a “sea-tizen,”

–          do a study tour through the Yeosu Expo,

–          and brainstorm projects they can launch in the coming months.

We hope the young leaders can walk away with a greater vision for the world’s oceans and seas, and become advocates for volunteer service opportunities connected to the marine environment.

Sharing laughs with a young student.

I applaud and strongly encourage sea development programs and global volunteer opportunities such as those offered through Service For Peace.

Today I wanted to encourage all the young people to DREAM BIG and connect all their volunteer efforts to greater goals for their nation and for this world.

Enthusiastic youth shout YES! We want to DREAM BIG!

The young people are growing up during a time of globalization and their minds are not divided by nation or by culture. Many spoke English, some had lived in America.  I see so much hope in this younger generation leading the way to building a world of peace.

It was an enthusiastic group.  Many are actively involved in service activities.

I asked if any have been to North Korea.  Some had for projects, some as tourists. Some raised their hands when I asked if they had relatives in North Korea.  I asked the group, “Do you want to join a service project in North Korea, and will you bring along all your friends?”  They enthusiastically responded, “YES!”

I am excited to see what they will post in the coming days. I am eager to read their pledge slogans on how to become responsible stewards of the ocean, and I want to spread their marine environment volunteer projects ideas.

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Local and international volunteers come out to rebuild a village after a tsunami in Thailand.

Service is a core principle by which I live and a character  I teach my children. Expanding the culture of service is a personal mission of mine.

Service is not merely for service’s sake. It is not simply the act of doing good deeds. It is much more. It is a means to an end. The question is what is that end?

• First, service connects us to our intrinsic capacity to live altruistically. We  are spiritual beings that were designed to live for more than just ourselves. When we live by the spirit of service, we begin a transformation. Our hearts and minds are directed outward, to our families, our communities, our nations and our world. We become empowered to change hate to love, resentment to forgiveness, tragedy into opportunity.

• Second, it can change the global ethic. Through service, everyone becomes a catalyst for building connections and collectively generating solutions. The timeless ethic of serving others engages everyone, both foreign and local, in the process of building better and more sustainable families, communities and nations. This is how we will meet the needs of every person and secure a world of co-prosperity and peace.

Service is love in action. It the the way to peace.

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The following address was delivered by Dr. Moon at the Asia-Pacific Conference for the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) held at the Changwon Convention Center on October 29, 2011.

I was very impressed with Dr. Lee’s talk on the importance of interfaith harmony and dialogue especially in the post 9/11 era. And I was very impressed with his emphasis on the need to educate a generation of young leaders to carry on a new global ethic of volunteering that can help transform not only the respective nations of which the participants are members of but the region of Southeast Asia more importantly.

I will just like to explain about how I founded Service For Peace. I think the name Service For Peace kind of explains what the mission of that organization is about. Because the way that I look at service is that service is a means to an end. The question is what end is the end that we wish to accomplish? For me, when I started Service For Peace, the end that I would like to see accomplished whether it be in an individual, in a family, in a community, in society, in a nation, in the world was that certain end or the conclusion of eventually coexistence, harmony, and most importantly peace.

Global Peace Foundation Cambodia volunteers teach English

Being a person of great faith my affinity to serve comes from my faith in which human beings are the sons and daughters of our almighty God and therefore are people that have the ability, or people that have the potential, people who have the capacity to be able to do altruistic things because they are essentially spiritual in nature.

So for me my journey especially in the field of volunteering, as was mentioned previously by the two former speakers, came from a spiritual orientation rooted in a deep fundamental ethic, universal ethic that has been the basis of time-worn wisdom and traditions from countless years of human growth and civilization.

I am glad to report that from those intentions Service For Peace after ten years, this year marks the ten year anniversary of Service for Peace, has become a global entity recognized by the UN, as well as working with the US government in cooperation with the National Day of Service, as well as continues here in this nation of Korea, has garnered the support and the partnership of many, many, service based organizations, as well as service intended volunteering individuals here in this nation of Korea.

What I am most proud of is the efforts that we have made in terms of bringing the culture of serving others to our brothers and sisters in North Korea. Service for Peace is the one of the first organizations that pioneered not just offering foodstuffs and humanitarian aid to the North but pioneered the ethic of service and volunteering. Because as you actually engage with the indigenous people what is actually happening, as former speakers have mentioned, is that through engaging we are actually learning and teaching about the ethic of serving others, of living for the sake of others and how that can build better and more sustainable communities, families, and even nations.

I would like to say that especially in this IAVE conference, which is a deep honor for me to come and attend, that you are all very special people on the frontline of making fundamental changes. You know volunteering is an individual act. Nobody told me to go and serve a different community, different family, or different nation. You are doing it because you are guided by some – let’s say passion, some belief that serving your mankind can ultimately bring about not only your spiritual enrichment, enrichment to your individual lives but to the lives of others.

This is a very personal act can have the potential for larger consequences down the road, consequences that can have positive or negative influence. In the past many times organizations that tried to offer service through humanitarian aid failed to recognize the importance of education and the need to serve others. So I would like to state, many times service organization in the past have the orientation of offering somebody a fish instead of teaching them how to fish. So as we look at the service world today, many in the developing world today wonder whether or not all the foreign aid they’ve been given to their respective nations have truly been productive or not. This is really where I believe that a higher understanding and ethic needs to be established in recognizing the importance of service as a means to an end.

Global Peace Youth Exchange volunteers in Indonesia

We’re not serving just for the sake of serving. We are serving in order to build a better world, to meet fundamental needs of human beings around the world. This is really where we need to ask the question, “What is the end that we are trying to achieve?”

For me, I believe that service will play a pivotal role in changing the global ethic that currently is in the world. I really emphasize the importance of principles and values. Another organization that I founded, the Global Peace Festival Foundation, is rooted on the vision of building One Family under God, and is emphasizing the importance of principles and values as the pillars upon which that vision can be substantiated.

It has a tri-fold platform of building interfaith partnerships, of restoring the family, because the family is the fundamental institution of any society, nation and the world, and more importantly utilizing service as a vehicle to bring about sustainable community development in regions around the world.

I am glad to report that these efforts have brought about tremendous changes in the nations and the regions that we have been participating in that is aligned with the challenges the world is currently facing today.

As service leaders we need to deal with the interfaith issue. Here in Southeast Asia it is more a reality than any other region in the world. As service leaders we need to deal with the issue of the breakdown of the family and the traditional ideal of the family all around the world, especially in the developing nations of the third world economies. As service leaders we need to recognize that service is a vehicle to an end. That we need to have a goal orientation in terms of our service initiatives.

So with that, I am deeply honored and deeply touched that I am invited to speak at such an illustrious gathering of leaders in your own right. I am sure that you come from different backgrounds, different faith communities, different nationalities, different ethnic groups, etc. Yet we hold one common aspiration and vision together, and that common aspiration and vision is that truly through serving others, through loving our human brothers and sisters that we can make a fundamental change in the world. And thus I want to applaud you for all of your efforts and also specifically to really think, to challenge ourselves. How I act and serve can not only transform myself and the constituents of that which I am a part of as a group but the community in which you are engaged in, the nations that you are engaged in, the regions that you are engaged in to bring about a better humanity a more sustainable solution for this 21^st century.

Thank you very much.

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Learn more about Dr. Moon’s efforts to promote service and volunteerism here: https://www.hyunjinmoon.com/service-and-volunteerism/

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