Nada Barakat explores the world of voluntary work If such things could be measured, the highest rate of participation by volunteer youths was recorded immediately after the 25 January Revolution. The revolutionary spirit increased Egyptians' sense of social responsibility and created important targets including spreading social awareness and adopting plans for social development depending on youth participation in social work. "I hope I can contribute positively in building this society," a sentence said almost every day by young Egyptians in all social organisations and charity clubs. According to the National Information Centre, the number of NGOs in Egypt is 16,800. "We recorded the highest number of volunteer participation, following the eruption of the revolution, with the launch of our blood donation campaign to cover Tahrir Square injuries," said Nevine Ahmed, advertising and public relations officer at Resala, a charity organisation. Ahmed added that since Resala was founded in 1999 by a group of college students, it has relied completely on young volunteers. Resala has 61 branches across Egypt with an average of 400 volunteers per month in each branch working on organising 24 activities among which are educating young children of poor families, packaging food and delivering it, and building houses and mosques. It also helps what the government has missed in terms of extending water pipelines and cleaning the streets. Other non-profit organisations like Al-Orman have approximately 5,000 volunteers mostly aged between 16 to 30, but Al-Orman's primary activities depend on a large number of full-time employees all year long needed all year long because sometimes volunteers have other commitments. "During the summer we have the highest participation since the majority of our volunteers are on vacation. So we don't want to overwhelm them with too much work in order to keep them interested in volunteering," said Enas Galal, Al-Orman's media coordinator. Galal added that after the revolution the number of their volunteers increased, not only because social consciousness is increasing with the revolutionary spirit, but also because their politically active members better manage their time. However, Mariam Mohsen, public relations director of The Egyptian Medical Student Association (EMSA), blames the political participation of youth for the noticeable decrease in their members. "Unfortunately many people started feeling demotivated, asking themselves why they would go spread health awareness while major political action and change could be achieved now if they were in Tahrir Square," Mohsen said. Currently EMSA has only 50 members although when it started in 2008 it had 150 who were involved in several charity works. Their main focus was to spread awareness about blindness, breast cancer and child immunisation against pneumonia. Mohsen adds, "we are fighting strongly against volunteers shunning social work, because while there is a revolution in the country there are also many women with breast cancer and children dying every day." Others stress that there are roles for volunteers that cannot be replaced by social workers. "We rely on our volunteers to help in reforming the psychological state of street children by helping them mingle in society," Abla El-Badri, general manager of Hope Village Society (HVS), said. Since HVS started in the 1980s it has provided services including shelter, education and assists in the rehabilitation of thousands of street children. The organisation's mission is to protect street child and minimise their chances of becoming a danger to society. HVS relies on volunteers to raise awareness that the problem of street children is not exclusive to a certain social class and if neglected could expose society to extreme danger. El-Badri adds, "Luckily after the revolution our volunteers increased from 500 or 600 to 1,000, especially after people noticed the threat posed by street children and how they could be manipulated to cause chaos like in the recent violence at the Council of Ministers in Qasr Al-Aini Street." Social work cannot get enough volunteers despite the growing need to help many left-out segments in Egyptian society. Among active charity clubs is Cleft Care Club/Egypt (CCC) based on a community of volunteers who work together to embrace children born with cleft lip and/or palate and help them receive comprehensive treatment in a child-friendly environment by a team of medical professionals. CCC relies on volunteers for fundraising, awareness campaigns and rehabilitation of patients. "We need more and more volunteers to generate more income and to reduce the cost of hiring people since we need to direct all our revenues to surgeries and treatment," said Amr El-Deeb, co-founder of CCC.
