Voluntarism: The Management and Sustainability of the Voluntary Action
 
Within Afkar II program, financed by EU, the Office of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform held a training session, under the title “Voluntarism: The Management and Sustainability of the Voluntary Action”. The workshop was organized by Émergences Foundation for technical assistance, and held on 23 & 24, July 2008 in the Conference hall on OMSAR premises.

                                       

The French expert and volunteer in the French Popular Relief organization, Mr. Jean Marshal, talked about the experience of France in voluntarism and underlined the methods adopted by the French civil organizations to bring in volunteers. He noted that the volunteers are divided into two categories: full-time volunteers who volunteer in return for a symbolic wage, and part-time volunteers who volunteer for nothing.
As for the Lebanese expert, Ms. Noura Daccache, she explained the methods that can motivate the voluntary action within the Lebanese civil organizations. Ms. Daccache stressed the importance of defining the objective of voluntarism, of determining the groups that should be targeted and the methods that should be adopted for that purpose, and of ensuring the sustainability of the voluntary action.

The two experts explained how the voluntarism is mutually enriching, both for the organization in terms of alleviating the working pressure, benefiting from the competence of the volunteers and from the indirect promotion of the organization, and for the volunteer in terms of gaining expertise and a chance of being permanently appointed. The experts highlighted the importance of giving the volunteers self-confidence, the appropriate role, and an opportunity in the field they excel most, of communicating constantly with them and striving towards increasing their experience and orienting them towards the best. Hence, the more the management is effective the more the voluntary action is efficient. Also, the experts underlined that a volunteer in work is as important as an employee.
During the workshop, the trainees were tested through practical works in their ability to deal with voluntarism.

            
more