JEDDAH: The Jeddah municipality recently formed a new department under the name Friends of Jeddah, which aims at supporting all types of volunteer work that concerns the development of the city, according to Jamal Al-Mundhiri, head of the department.
The new department, which has 900 dedicated volunteers, organized last week a big cleaning campaign along the city’s seaside. The campaign included 350 volunteering cleaners and 40 divers who collected underwater waste for proper disposal, Al-Mundhiri said.
He said that volunteer groups have cleaned all the area near the Fatimah Mosque at Jeddah’s northern seaside.
“Each volunteer has contributed with eight hours of work — a total of 3,100 hours for all of them,” he added.
During the campaign, volunteers distributed more than 12,000 brochures that highlight the importance of cleanliness and environmental protection in addition to future programs of the newly established department.
The Friends of Jeddah has initiated 15 various volunteer programs in the past three months.
Al-Mundhiri noted that the department is working on formulating ongoing programs and increasing its volunteer base to 50,000 by next year in order to have a continuous flow of development campaigns that would help elevating the city to higher standards.
He said the department would launch a website containing all the news and events about the ongoing activities.
“It would be the first specialized website about organized volunteer work in the Middle East,” he said.
Al-Mundhiri pointed out that the aim of the department is to utilize the energies of the youth and invest them in the development of the city.
“The municipality has spent huge sums on developing the city, but it is useless if people do not participate in that development,” Al-Mundhiri pointed out.
He said that the department would pay many visits to local and government offices to discuss and formulate programs involving volunteer work.
“We want to use the connections and relations of the municipality to create and facilitate public service programs that can be participated by the people of Jeddah,” he said.
Programs will include awareness campaigns, cleaning, educational and other ideas that will lead to the development of the city and its residents, he added.
