Gulf groups to boost volunteerism

More than 30 volunteer organizations from the Gulf Cooperation Council are meeting in Jeddah from March 29 to April 1 to help boost community-based initiatives in the region.
President of the Arab Union for Voluntary Work Yusuf Al-Kazim will also attend the event organized by the Dallah Academy, which is part of the social responsibility department of Dallah Al-Baraka Holding Company.
The academy trains Saudi youth to get involved in voluntary work. The academic program is based on international curricula and includes classes, lectures and seminars on actual case studies.
Yasser Mohammed Abdo Yamani, deputy executive president for corporate responsibility at Dallah Al-Baraka, said at a press conference on Thursday that the meeting this month would take stock of what happened with voluntary work over the past four years.
“We will discuss the success and failures of our efforts,” he told Arab News. “The final recommendations of this conference will be shared with the government,” he said.
Amr Al-Oufi, director of the academy, told journalists at the press conference that other objectives of the meeting would be to develop the leadership skills of participants, ensure better community integration, and strengthen relations between voluntary groups so that they share experiences.
Al-Oufi said the meeting would also have workshops and presentations of voluntary initiatives. This would be used to institutionalize services for the benefit of the community.
In response to a question, Ayman Flemban, executive director of the group’s corporate social responsibility department, said that one of the major aims of the conference would be to unify the efforts of organizations working in the field.
“We are aspiring to have an official umbrella body to organize, classify and sort out various voluntary groups serving at the local level and assign them roles,” Flemban said.
The meeting will take place at the Durrat Al-Arous Resort in Jeddah for four days and include four intensive workshops and presentations on case studies in the Kingdom and the Gulf. There would also be several teambuilding events held to encourage individuals and groups to work closely in future.
Dallah Al-Baraka Holding Company has several other community projects underway for Muslims in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. These include education, training, skills development, infrastructure projects, setting up businesses, building of mosques and Islamic schools.
There are also projects to print the Qur’an and major Islamic books in various local languages. The philosophy is to help people build their communities. There are plans to expand these activities to many other countries across the world.