Of course, volunteers do not engage in NGO activities for free out of pure altruism. They too expect many benefits as compensation to their engagement, such as job-promising skills, working experience and valuable contacts to serve their future career. Some work hard hoping that they will ascend to a higher position in their NGO and start getting paid. In fact, a lot of people spend their adult lives as professional activists, but even more among them continue their career at another working position that they’ve acquired thanks to their NGO experience.
Participation in NGO projects and volunteering as an activist are “virtues” that are proudly pointed out in any CV, and every company takes those activities into consideration very seriously when deciding to employ somebody. The reason for that is the companies realize that the more the candidate engaged himself into doing something for free, the more he/she will be expected to offer hard labour for low cash; his volunteering merely guarantees to the company that the candidate was successfully trained to become an obedient, hard-working and compliant worker.
Other NGO activists hope that their dedication, along with all the skills they learn in the NGO (speech, organizing, management) might bring them attention in the circles of the political parties (who also search for hard-working and submissive workers to help them seize or maintain power) where they might be recruited as a party staff and then perhaps even seize some profitable position in the public administration. This is especially the case in Macedonia, where political parties monitor very closely all forms of organized dissent, so that they could find fresh young and talented enthusiasts and recruit them in their ranks.
Careerism in the NGO sector is a logical result. The entire NGO sector, being exclusively pro-capitalist, actively praises and promotes all the revolting “values” of capitalism, such as competition, rivaling with coworkers, use of all possible means to acquire financial benefit, taking all kinds of shit from those “above” in the name of career advancement and sacrificing common needs for one’s personal benefit. Egoism, success, competitive spirit, selfishness, rivalry and a complete lack of solidarity are the “values” the NGOs are proudly taking from capitalism. The NGO activists are rarely ideologically oriented, for what drives them is not some desired vision of society, but their personal financial advancement. If they do follow some ideology, it’s the capitalist ideology.
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