Towards building an inclusive society in the Arab world: A roadmap to effective volunteer-state initiatives
Tania Haddad led the Lebanon case study research for the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme's State of the World’s Volunteerism Report 2022. She is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Nonprofit Management at the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her research interests include civil society, nonprofit management, nonprofit education, volunteering, disaster management and e-government.
In her commentary below, Tania Haddad shares her perspective on how to develop effective volunteer-state initiatives.
Towards building an inclusive society in the Arab world: A roadmap for effective volunteer-state initiatives
Volunteering is strongly rooted in the religious traditions of the Arab world. Historically, most volunteering was informal, and was mainly associated with religious and cultural traditions of supporting one another and the community.
However, the development of formal volunteerism in the region was marked by many challenges: First, the absence of clear policies on civic engagement and volunteerism; second, lack of funding, and third, lack of enthusiasm of volunteering due to the low levels of the institutionalization of philanthropy. Studies show that there are limited volunteering opportunities for experienced and skilled professionals as well as for young students between the ages of 7-12.
Although volunteering and civic service are not popular in the Arab world, recently a new trend has emerged: organizations and societies are providing more volunteering opportunities, and many governments are increasingly promoting volunteerism in the following ways. First, states have introduced the legal frameworks and created an enabling political environment to support and encourage volunteerism. Second, in different countries, the state is transforming the attitudes of the public through policies as they raise awareness of the positive impact that volunteering can have in society.
Indeed, in the Arab region, volunteers have contributed to addressing a range of development challenges. In any crisis, they are often the first to respond and they are contributing to several SDGs including gender equity and women’s empowerment, health, and the eradication of poverty and illiteracy. Moreover, through their engagement with the most vulnerable and marginalized groups, volunteers are essentially fostering social inclusion. By volunteering outside of their own communities, they are also encouraging cross-community dialogue and building better societies as a result.
Below is a roadmap designed to guide volunteers engaged in formal organizations and states in the Arab world in order to ensure the effectiveness of co-production initiatives that they undertake:
- Role of the state:
To ensure the success of any co-production project between volunteers and the state, commitment from governmental institutions is crucial. First, in working on any project with the volunteers, ministries, and institutions need to develop a long-term strategic plan and commit to the initiative. Second, they need to assign an expert from the government to coordinate project activities with the volunteers. Moreover, there is a need for coordination between ministries, different state entities as well as associations, and civil society. Coordination can ensure effective outreach while supporting the development of the project, and bringing different stakeholders together.
Volunteers bring their commitment and expertise to targeted interventions. The commitment of the volunteers is an essential element since it can lead to better advocacy for the rights of the most marginalized in society.
Success is reached when volunteers of the organizations lead the initiative in coordination with the state. Volunteers often have the know-how, the will and the means to serve the community.
Volunteers must respect the dignity of the people they want to help. People need to feel both valued and safe. In this sense, marginalized populations will be more likely to accept the services being offered and engage in initiatives if they feel that their dignity is preserved.
Long-term planning is needed. Volunteer organizations and government entities need to address the short-term as well as the root cause of the problem. The effectiveness of any project can also be attributed to the commitment of the volunteer organization to long-term planning while the government tends to engage in short-term planning. For example, AMEL association in Lebanon engages in finding long-term solutions for marginalized communities, thus their plans focus on resolving various challenges in these communities whether they are social, health, economic or legal. They set a clear goal and design their projects to reach the goal. They do not work on short-term solutions as opposed to the state, which often takes on a dimension of the problem and attempts to resolve it.
Through their strong relationship with different stakeholders, volunteer organizations are able to lobby from the inside. Rather than advocating from the outside, projects are created in direct coordination with the state and hence can be better implemented.
Communication between different stakeholders and the government is key to the success of any volunteer project. It is important to approach any problem in a constructive way, to gain everyone’s cooperation to achieve the goals.
Creating a common ground between government and stakeholders is essential in order to work to find solutions to their common problems. The volunteers have an important role to play in that they can communicate at different levels and contribute to the creation of this common ground.
When designing or implementing any project, it is important to engage in constructive dialogue between the target community and the state. Volunteers can bridge the gap in lack of
trust between the marginalized community and state while providing long-term solutions.
To succeed, both the volunteer organization and the government need to be open to changing their strategies to achieve their final goal. Volunteer Organizations need to design projects in a way that is acceptable to the state, and the state should be willing to amend its policies with regards to vulnerable populations to achieve the aims of the project. For example, in Lebanon volunteers at AMEL association developed a plan to provide the domestic workers with COVID19 Vaccine. These workers are considered as the most marginalized in the community and most of them lack the legal documentation, and as such could not access health services, which them to register for the vaccine on an online platform. Volunteers worked in collaboration with the government to provide this community with access to registration on the platform, and conducted outreach to the marginalized communities and provided transportation to the vaccination centers in order to encourage them to take the vaccine.
In this regard, volunteers should develop plans that can both benefit the most marginalized and at the same time be accepted by the government. The plan should be flexible enough to allow the state to amend some of its clauses and at the same time be beneficial for the volunteers. This can be reached through working effective volunteer organization that has a strong relationship with the government.
Conclusion
Co-production projects engaging both volunteers inside organizations and different government entities have been successful in reaching the most marginalized communities in the Arab world, and have helped foster social inclusion. Volunteers through their commitment and with the support of effective organizations have gained the trust of marginalized communities, tailored projects to the community’s needs, and engaged the state in their initiatives.