Amal Al-Sibai Saudi Gazette For charity work to be successful and genuinely beneficial to those on the receiving end, good intentions are not enough. Dr. Mu'in Shabib, who has over 20 years of experience in delivering humanitarian relief to war stricken areas such as Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, was on a tour in Jeddah to educate the society on how to effectively establish, manage, and steer a volunteer, community service oriented organization. The four-day course was sponsored by Watan, a humanitarian aid organization, and Syan, a skills development institute. “One of the main problems in most Arab societies at both the individual and the organizational level is that we often try to carry 10 watermelons in only two hands. Of course, they all fall down so we end up with nothing. When time, energy, and resources are scattered into several different directions, failure is almost always the outcome and very little is accomplished. I advise concentrating on one specific segment of charity work and channeling all your efforts toward that one goal in a systematic and organized way,” said Shabib. Shabib offered constructive criticism to an organization that attempts to provide medical aid and educational services and also sends food baskets to the refugee camps on the Turkish/Syrian border. With limited number of volunteers, no doubt the group will fall short in one or all of its endeavors and the quality of the services offered will suffer. Preferably, the organization should pick just one goal, focus on it, and improve its work. The organization should have a clear mission statement. Even the goal to provide medical aid to a district with a low socio-economic status is too vague and broad and will not be properly implemented. The leaders of the group must pinpoint the exact responsibilities, whether it will be a childhood immunization campaign, or checkups from family medicine physicians, or supplying medications based on a survey of the population in the area, or finding a hospital that will perform surgeries free of charge, or sending a medical team to promote women's health. Lack of communication between already existing charity organizations leads to an overlapping of tasks and as a result, valuable time and money goes to waste. To illustrate, he mentioned that last winter a plea was announced for the collection of 1,000 blankets for displaced Syrian refugees living in flimsy tents in Jordan. Several organizations rushed to adopt this mission and they each launched a campaign. Due to the absence of communication, cooperation, and coordination between these charity organizations, a total of 8,000 blankets were sent to the refugee camp that only needed 1,000. The humanitarian aid must match the needs of the people because an excess is not necessarily useful. “Avoid re-inventing the wheel. If there are already 30 different charity organizations that distribute Ramadan food baskets to poor families in Jeddah and they are doing a good job, what contribution did you add to the society by opening a 31st organization of the exact same sort? You should either join one of these groups to support them and help them grow and expand, or you should serve the community from another angle. Competition between volunteer organizations, greed, and fighting for taking credit is not noble. Work together, not against one another,” explained Shabib. “Imagination and having a vision is sometimes more important than knowledge. Being creative, taking a helicopter look, and expanding your horizons will produce great results. When you raise your ceiling and have higher expectations, amazing accomplishments will be made,” said Shabib. Instead of simply buying books for children in a deprived neighborhood, by organizing your team, attracting the media and big investors, and working within the system of the country, you may end up building and running a school for these kids. Funding a school has long term benefits for the neighborhood. He added: “Every organization should design what we call an “elevator pitch.” In less than one minute, you should be able to explain the mission of your organization and what makes it exceptional. A short, concise, and catchy statement can get the message across, and spread your organization's popularity to increase the society's participation.” An essential step that many volunteer workers in the Arab world tend to skip is research. Thorough research, studying the logistics and costs, determining the exact needs of your target, and collecting information and data will definitely boost the productivity of the organization. Establishing a database and making field visits to the sites on the ground to document the precise humanitarian needs are key strategies when it comes to volunteer work. Another requirement for any volunteer group to progress and move forward is for it to have a strong leader with excellent management and administrative skills. Summarizing the interesting course on the principles of volunteer work; remarkable achievements will be reached only if the organization's goals are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and T in a pre-determined time frame.
