JEDDAH: Twenty-three volunteers from the Jeddah Friends Program (JFP) recently worked 1,104 hours on a project to repair and maintain 16 houses belonging to the poor in Jeddah.
Jamal Abdullah Al-Mundhiri, JFP director, said such projects are ideal for volunteers who often find an absence of a mechanism to help them participate in volunteer work.
He said voluntary work has become one of the pillars of development that could not be ignored in the future. “Voluntary work is no longer a luxury practiced by some people in their leisure time but has become a growing trend for developed societies to invest the energies of their youth,” he added.
Akram Mahmoud, a leader of a group of participants, said there is large number of people, especially among the youth, ready to participate in voluntary work. He said such people only need properly publicized voluntary programs to embark on such schemes.
Abdul Khaliq Al-Sharif, a volunteer who participated in painting a house, said at the beginning volunteers were reluctant but when they saw that their supervisors were busy involved in work, they became enthusiastic and started to work with full force.
Nasser Al-Harithy, another volunteer, said the youth in Jeddah were in need of proper guidance and suggested that model projects be formulated for them in the future to activate youth sitting idle in coffee shops. “We need programs that would further consolidate the sense of belonging to this country,” he added.
He said such projects would be useful for both volunteers and people for whom work is done.
