Exercise 7

LSH 2903 – Community Service – Learning /  Exercise #7

Charity and Volunteering in the UAE - Information and Activities

The UAE is famous for its hospitality and the desire to give one's time and efforts to help other people.

When I travel to other countries and talk to people about my job, the students and the UAE in general, one constant thought I hear repeated is that the UAE is a very hospitable country and its people are very generous. People in the UAE often want to do things to help others, whether it is other UAE Nationals or people from other countries.

Within the UAE we see so many examples of people volunteering and giving to charities to try and help others. People do this out of the simple goodness of their hearts and to try to help other people to have a better life than they have at the moment. An obvious example is TAKATOF which promotes the idea of volunteering within the country.

Just last semester (March 2013) we had a major charity fundraising week when students, staff and teachers of ADMC raised 25,000 Dh to donate to a school in a poor village Cambodia.

The UAE is also very strongly represented in the international field of assisting people from other countries. It may be through the Red Crescent that people donate money, time or skills to try and help others. So much of the time when we hear about various international problems, the UAE is one of the first to step forward and provide assistance.

Activities

Use the following link to access the website of the UAE Red Crescent.

Once you are there, see if you can answer the following questions. This will help you to find out what the organisation does, what some of their projects are and who are the people involved in the organisation.

http://rcuae.ae/

1.                   The UAE Red Crescent has contributed to a number of building projects both inside and outside the UAE. Name three projects the UAERC has worked on

a.       In 2009 they build around 100 houses and made maintenance for many houses that owned by poor people around the UAE, and also they build and made a maintenance for a 19 mosques.

b.       They made projects for education and housing in Afghanistan, Siri-lanka, India Yemen and Palestine.

c.       Drilling of over 2254 wells total the cost of 12 million 993 thousands and 605  dirhams.

  

2.                   Name at least 4 countries the UAERC has worked in to provide various project assistance

a.       Yemen

b.       Palestine

c.       Sudan

d.       Maldives

3.                   What was the estimated total cost of projects undertaken in the UAE during 2009?

It costs over 180 million dirhams.

4.                   According to the information about the foreign based projects, which group of projects received funding of 8,373,558 Dirhams?

Housing, education, health and other infrastructure.

                     

5.                   According to the information about the Foreign Projects, the UAERC is involved in some very important work. According to the English translation, these are listed below. Try to come up with an easy explanation for each of the terms in the grid.

	Translation Term	My/Our own meaning
	reconstruction	rebuilding
	disasters	catastrophe
	crises	Problem – squeeze
	rehabilitation	repair
	infrastructure	Foundation of building
	devastation	destruction
	public utilities	Public services

6.                   Name three situations which are listed as �natural disasters�.

a.       hurricanes

b.       volcanoes

c.       Earthquakes

7.                   Crescent Volunteers University

What are the three areas of training/qualification that university students could work towards?

a.       First aid.

b.       Methods of volunteer work.

c.       Public Relations Committee.

Exercise 6

Voluntary and charitable Organizations

There are many local, national and international organizations that support people or projects around the word. Two of which are:

1.     Unicef

UNICEF is the largest and most powerful organization in matters concerning children. UNICEF is working in more than 160 countries to help children get a good and safe life.
UNICEF collects and distributes money to give children clean water and enough food, reasonable living conditions, medical aid and vaccines and the opportunity of getting an education.

UNICEF especially concentrates on helping children in specifically tough situation, such as orphans and children who live in areas of war or poverty.

In UNICEF’s annual report of 1990, the seven most important goals for the nineties are revealed:

1. To reduce the death rate for children who are less than five years old to one third of that of 1990. 2. To reduce the death rate of new-born children to half of that of 1990. 3. To reduce the malnutrition among children who are less than five years old to one third of that of 1990. 4. To ensure everybody access to clean drinking water and sanitary installation. 5. To give all children access to basic education, with the goal that 80% of all children will complete mandatory basic school.

6. To reduce illiteracy among adults to half of that of 1990, with specific attention to women’s access to education.
7. To protect children in specifically difficult situations, especially when it comes to armed conflicts.

UNICEF Activity 1:

Open the link http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/uae_44659.html

List and discus the latest newsline events in the United Arab Emirates

1-    Arab Media Award on Child Rights initiated to honour outstanding achievements.

2-    Giving money to Jeboti.

3-    Stop the Violence In South Sudan.

UNICEF Activity 2:

How can you help UNICEF? Working in groups, fill in the table below.

Ideas of supporting UNICEF	Ways of achieving it	Date of completion
Health Awareness	Aware people to do sports and be healthy by eating healthy foods.
Abroad Poverty Aid	Search for people who need the life needs and give them money, food and love.
Sport activities in Abu Dhabi	Do a sport event to aware the people about the importance of sports and give them the chance to make some exercises.
Support Traffic week	Respect the rules that the police put and be a good drivers in the street.

2-    Takatof

Click on the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMDUTjeymxk&feature=related

Activity 1

Using Google search for information about Takatof and answer the questions below

What is Takatof?

It is a nationwide volunteering initiative in the United Arab Emirates, and one of the principal initiatives of the Emirates Foundation.  

Which year did start? And who started it?

It established in 2005 in the UAE under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

What volunteer work have they done?

1-Formula 1 project
2-Takatof  Ramadan project
3-Jacket distribution campaign
4-Tuscoloosa Tornado recovery Aid


How can you help?

I would volunteer and help the community, in any project big or small because I am a good citizen.

Exercise 5

Exercise 5

LSH 2903 – Community Service Learning

Week 4

Looking at volunteering in different spheres of society.

During the summer of 2012 the Olympic Games were held in London. David Moorcroft is a former athlete. At one point he held the world record for the 5,000 metres. David can be heard discussing the importance of volunteering the Olympic Games.

Zoe Hall is a lady who was one of the volunteers at the Games. She talks about the event and how important it was at the time as well as how much it has inspired her to continue working as a volunteer.

This link is about half way down the page.

http://www.ageuk.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer/

Listen again and see if you can work out the answers to these questions about the interview:

1.                  How old were the Games volunteers? All ages

2.                  During the Games, the volunteers had a special title. What was this special title? Games maker

3.                  Complete this quote from David… “… for a moment in time volunteering had a profile and an image that they fully deserve but don’t always get.”

4.                  David mentions that some of the volunteers are semi-retired. What does this mean? People who have time (working part time)

5.                  Zoe worked in Events Services. Where was this located? Olympic stadium

6.                  How does she describe the experience of volunteering for the Olympics and Paralympics? Fantastic

7.                  What benefits of volunteering, according to Zoe?

a.       Meeting new friends

b.      Fun

c.       Satisfaction

d.      Confidence

8.                  Why does David feel that volunteering in the community is so important?

Volunteers of all ages will have full support from the community with the all the free time.

 This page is also from AGE UK.

http://www.ageuk.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer/volunteers-week/

What volunteer roles do the following people have?

	Name	Job
1	John McArthur	Age UK Harpenden volunteer
2	Samarah Hashmi	Survey Analyst volunteer
3	Oliver Stannard	Copywriter volunteer
4	Stanley Parker	Market Drayton shop volunteer
5	Camilla Williamson	Volunteer parliamentary assistant

Look again at these people and their jobs. What can you say about volunteering from the information in your chart?

The age is not a problem, if you are a human means that you have skills and if you have skills means that you can volunteer.

Human right activity 1-2-3 - Exercise 3 & 4

Esteem	Article 1	Article 2	Article 21	Article 29	Article 6
Physiological	Article 12	Article 24	Article 25	Article 28	Article 4
Self-actualization	Article 20	Article  18	Article 19	Article 27	Article 30
Love/belonging	Article 10	Article 15	Article 16	Article 20	Article 8
Safety	Article 3	Article 5	Article 14	Article 22	Article 23

Human Rights Activity 3:

1.     Working in pairs, go to Google Maps (or a similar site) and download an image of the map of the city of Abu Dhabi. It may be a part of Abu Dhabi rather than the whole city. It should include homes, major public buildings (e.g., parks, schools, mosques) and public services (e.g., hospitals, fire department, police station) and any other places that are important to the community (e.g., grocery stores, mall, gas stations). If they are not on the map, you should add them in the correct places.

2.     Analyze your map from a human rights perspective. What human rights do they associate with different places on their maps? For example, a mosque with freedom of thought and religion; the school with the right to education; the post office with the right to information, to privacy, and to self-expression. As they identify these rights, they should look up the relevant article(s) in the UDHR and write the article number(s) next to that place on the map.

3.     Present the map to the whole class.

·         Did any parts of your map have a high concentration of rights? How do you explain this?

No, because it’s an industrial area.

·         Did any parts have few or no rights associations? How do you explain this?

No, because it’s spread around the map.

·         Are there any articles of the UDHR that seem to be especially exercised in this community? How can this be explained?

Yes, article three where it says right to life, liberty, personal security because there are police stations everywhere.

·        Are there any articles of the UDHR that no group included on their map? How can this be explained?

No, everything are fundable .

How could town/city planners might use information like this when they develop areas for their citizens?

They can use the information by distributing the rights around the community so it will be easy for the citizens to reach anywhere.