10 November 2003

Cairo: Given the importance of volunteerism as a development tool and the coincidence that the international celebration of voluntary work took place in 2001 (UN international year of volunteers), the Institute of Cultural Affairs "Middle East and North Africa" developed a pilot project entitled the "Volunteer Child". The project aims at educating the new generation in the spirit of volunteer work and community service.

Egypt is no doubt a country where charity is widespread due to the influence of the religious culture -whether Moslem or Christian- and to the generosity and solidarity of its people. Charity generally takes the form of material donations or specific and irregular services. Volunteerism in the sense of free and organized donation of time and effort for a cause or for community service is lacking. However, it is precisely this form of philanthropy that enables community development and this by relying on the knowledge, experience and time of its members. Accordingly, the project aspires to the expansion and normalization of this more engaged form of philanthropy.

The project is being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education in three governorates in Egypt, including Cairo. Six schools were elected in each governorate, three public and three private schools. In each school volunteer groups of 30 students (between the age of 9 and 15) were formed and two coordinators were chosen from the teaching staff and the social assistants. It is the first project in Egypt in the field of volunteerism that targets children of such a young age. According to its usual policy, ICA is not to work directly with the target group (the children) but rather through the intermediary that will guarantee the sustainability of the project after the withdrawal of the NGO. Thus the biggest part of the intervention takes place with the project’s coordinators, who then face the major task of transmitting their knowledge to the children.

The project consists of two distinctive phases. The first is a capacity building phase where training sessions where organized for the coordinators in the fields of planning, concepts of volunteerism, participatory work with children and Action Learning Methods. The second phase started with the beginning of the school year. In this phase community service activities have been actually carried out by the volunteer groups. From September 2002 till now, the children organized blood donation campaigns, health and environmental awareness campaigns, setting up of small libraries in orphanages and schools for disabled persons …

During this second phase of the project, ICA’s role has been to make sure that the children are initiated to the rights concepts and attitudes. This monitoring has been done through the reviews of the “activity plan” proposals submitted by the coordinators. These plans should emerge as an outcome of the children’s ideas and discussions during the planning sessions. For an activity plan to be accepted for funding, the role of the children must be significant and their involvement throughout the implementation must be evident.

The monitoring also takes place during the monthly meetings with the project’s coordinators, and through regular field visits to the schools during volunteer groups’ meetings or during the performance of their activities.

Several challenges were encountered in the last two years. One difficulty relates to introducing the children to a sense of social responsibility and participation when such behavioural patterns are quasi-absent in our society. Another difficulty is the choice of indirect intervention through the coordinators of the volunteer groups. ICA has thus been confronted with their traditional education methods giving little space and trust for the children to create and influence. Finally, one of the major challenges was to convince the school and the parents of the importance of this type of activity so that they would support the children with their help, knowledge and recognition.

December 2003 will see the closing of the pilot project. However, we do not consider it as the end, but as a beginning of a new phase where the participating schools are to take the lead in volunteerism education. Moreover, the lessons learned are serving to improve the methods and tools in the development of a new project. Those two years have uncovered many opportunities and has left a good impression as evidenced from positive feedback from concerned parties. We hope that the multiplication of this kind of projects at different levels and within several settings will result in a better understanding of the importance of volunteerism, both as a development tool and as an indicator of the socio-cultural supremacy of nations.