The government should take stock of the entire volunteering sector and reflect on how it can make a difference by enabling what, Dharendra Wardhana, a deputy director at employment directorate at the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), defines as “the ecosystem, basically the awareness and readiness of stakeholders related to the volunteerism at every levels (from central to local and in each line ministries)”.

According to Dharendra, who has a strong interest in social capital and civic engagement, there is no need, at least not yet, to come up with a stronger regulatory framework to better govern volunteerism, one key element of the broader concept of civic engagement. If properly harnessed, volunteerism can be the best “glue” linking policy-making with the citizenry and investing on it would bring the quality and depth of Indonesia’s democracy to the highest level.

Dharendra’s point of view underscores that it is better first to map and understand the many existing volunteering initiatives to better enable them on the ground before moving on with further regulatory measures.

Based on a survey conducted by Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in 2018, Indonesia has the highest proportion of its people volunteering with a score of 53 percent. This data shows that the desire of Indonesian to join a volunteering program is very high.

What can be done by the government to tap into this potential and desire to contribute?

Talking only about formal forms of volunteering, the country can boost several best practices, from Indonesia Mengajar (Indonesia Teaches) that builds youth leadership positively impacting local schools to the work being carried out by Taruna Tanggap Bencana (Disaster Responsive Youth) in the area of natural disasters, where the country truly stands out.

In addition there is Indorelawan, a national platform that connects volunteers with local non-profit organizations, helping more citizens to find the most suitable opportunities to serve in local communities.

Yet the heart of social capital of the country lies with the thousands of small volunteer groups or the millions of informal volunteers that are contributing to national development and often go unrecognized.

Is there any way Indonesia can do a better a job at strengthening the ecosystem, as Dharendra mentioned? Are there any venues to better coordinate, support and enable the stakeholders’ already promoting volunteerism in the country? Most importantly, what can we learn from these diverse experiences?

After all it is about strengthening partnerships, collaboration and synergy, even just at the level of sharing best practices and tools used on the ground, nothing that much different from what National Development Planning Minister Suharso Monoarfa asked when recently calling for collective efforts to achieve the SDG on peace and security.

People’s mobilization is essential but it needs to get organized and there isn’t better thing to do then learning from the existing work being done. Perhaps there is also scope to reduce overlapping and bring different initiatives together.

For example, look at Mental Revolution movement that was spearheaded by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo at the beginning of his first term in office. It is a movement with five core programs but each of them is coordinated by a different line ministry while all reporting to the coordinating minister for human development and culture.

Is this system working effectively or are there other possible ways to effectively ensure that the citizens of the country embrace the mental leaps requested to foster accountability, harmony and development?

Based on Presidential Decree No. 59/2017 on creation of a national implementation framework to achieve of the SDGs, efforts are being undertaken to develop the regional versions at provincial and district levels. Dharendra said the main challenge was building awareness among stakeholders at the local level, let alone allocating a specific budget for this.

Now with so many volunteering organizations, small and big alike, already on the ground, what can be done to really use their expertise and knowhow to implement localized frameworks where citizens can a have a voice to help achieve the SDGs?

Having a stronger volunteering infrastructure and perhaps later on even a legal framework regulating it, could be the best way to build accountability and local leadership.

On the one hand, the government should really facilitate and support those non-profit groups already on the ground, maximizing their impact through scaling-up funding. The government can also learn from them on what works and what is not while devising localized strategies to achieve the SDGs.

On the other hand also a better, stronger interagency coordination to link together all the existing initiatives directly implemented by the government could help.

The latter implies having a look at the work of government agencies and determining which of them is better equipped to do the job: enabling volunteers to keep doing what they are best at doing, solving problems on the ground.

Here some takeaways for this year’s International Volunteer Day: Mapping, enabling and fostering nonstate actors with a track record at national and local levels, re-organizing the energies of ministries involved in the sector.

Surely, there is a strong case for a more strategic approach and better coordination of volunteerism in Indonesia.

“I see huge potential for national volunteering programs based on previous experience that has garnered significant attention from policymakers. Volunteerism will indeed help achieve SDG targets by filling in the gap that the government cannot meet. Especially in this difficult time, most government programs will be reallocated to urgent needs and some might be left unfunded or some issues might become unattended. Volunteerism in this sense can be framed into a narrative on how the public can contribute to the development of a nation,” said Dharendra.

Does it look challenging? But something that could encourage you is the fact that the theme of this year’s International Volunteer Day is “Together We can Through Volunteerism”, what a choice!

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Simone Galimberti is the cofounder of ENGAGE and writer on social inclusion, youth development, regional integration and the SDGs in the context of Asia Pacific. Bhetri Sonia Yolandari is a student of biomedical engineering at Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), Surabaya.