Recognise Spontaneous Volunteers as Legitimate Humanitarian Actors

Spontaneous volunteer signalling to arriving boat, Lesvos 2015

Lesvos, 04:12 a.m. A speck on the horizon, a radio call, a clean hand-off - citizens bridging a gap the system hadn’t covered yet. That scene, from the opening of my book, is not just about one shoreline or one year. Versions of it repeat in windstorms that knock out power for a night, in floods that displace a town for a week, and in conflicts that upend whole regions for months. When need outruns capacity, spontaneous volunteers appear.

We don’t have to like the term “spontaneous.” What matters is the pattern: individuals and small groups self-mobilise, often at their own expense, to meet immediate needs. They are time-limited, task-oriented, lightly structured, and surprisingly interoperable with formal responders when there is a clear path for handover. They do not replace the state or the NGOs; they extend them, especially at the last mile and during the first chaotic period when bureaucracy is still booting up.

Recognition is not romance. It is governance. Pretending volunteers are aberrations does not make them go away, it simply ensures they operate without guidance, insurance, or a safe line of communication. A small measure of formal recognition changes the incentives. Invite a representative into briefings. Give them access to a single shared channel for updates. Offer eligibility for a short safety briefing on risks, red lines, local law, and referral routes. Issue a simple code of conduct. None of this turns citizens into a parallel agency. It does, however, anchor their energy to basic standards and shared priorities.

Why bother? Because recognition improves outcomes that actually matter. Coverage increases: unserved hours and remote pockets stop falling through the cracks. Time-to-assistance drops because calls no longer bounce in the dark between “not our remit” and “not yet funded.” Safety improves when red lines are stated out loud and volunteers know who to call before a situation deteriorates. Information quality rises as “I heard” becomes a timestamped note that feeds a situational picture everyone can see.

The usual objections come fast. What about liability? Exclusion doesn’t remove it; it hides it. A recognised volunteer, briefed for ten minutes, seen, and guided, is safer for everyone than an unrecognised volunteer operating anyway. Standards? A short, shared handover protocol is a higher floor than guesswork.

Professionalisation? Spontaneous volunteers cover surge and last-mile tasks so specialists can do what only they can do - clinical care, rescues, case management, engineering, investigations. Coordination? The cost of leaving a predictable actor out of the plan is higher than the cost of including them with a light structure.

Not every crisis is the same, and recognition should reflect that. In a flash event - hours or a day - there is only time for a brief safety talk and clear handovers. In week-long surges, you can layer in a 60–90 minute micro-onboarding and a rota. In months-long operations, you add a one-page understanding of scope and red lines, modular training, and routine peer support so volunteers don’t burn out. Proportionality is the point: match the structure to the risk and the timeline.

The lesson from Lesvos is simple and portable. When the system lagged, citizens built the missing rungs, early warning, reception, safe transfers, and a map that coordinators later relied on. The choice is not between purity and chaos. It is between shaping citizen energy into safer channels, or pretending it isn’t there while the work happens anyway. Recognise spontaneous volunteers for what the field already knows they are: legitimate humanitarian actors, and essential partners when the clock is against us.