Recently, ADRA Slovakia was certified by the European Commission to send humanitarian volunteers through the EU Aid Volunteers initiative as a safe and quality sending NGO. What does this mean in practice and what does such management of humanitarian volunteers look like?
When a person is actively volunteering at home in their community or in a developing country on the other side of the world, they do not receive tangible rewards for their volunteering. After all, that's what volunteering is all about - doing something for the benefit of others or for a specific project - without financial payment for the time and service rendered. But the person volunteering gains much more - it can positively change their values and their plans for the future, plus they gain important social capital: new contacts, partnerships and a host of useful skills. The host, receiving organisation grows with him, but so does the home, sending organisation.
In the case of the new European volunteering initiative „EU Aid Volunteers“, of which ADRA Slovakia is also a part thanks to the HVM (Humanitarian Volunteering Management) project, the volunteer even becomes a so-called „EU ambassador“. It is a great honour and a challenge at the same time. He or she should be a positive example of the values of the European Union in the country of his or her new assignment. It is the EU that funds the training, certification of organisations and the deployment of European humanitarian volunteers to post-conflict countries. It is, after all, the largest donor of humanitarian and development aid, and its senior officials, as well as its population, should not care what happens in regions affected by natural disasters or social conflicts. We have long known that these will only increase due to the negative effects of climate change. So we need to be ready and determined - to help people in need effectively.
Effectively assisting victims of humanitarian crises
It is in the lowest-income countries that millions of victims are killed every year by disasters that deprive them of their loved ones, their health, their shelter, their food and their livelihoods. Junior and senior expert volunteers under the umbrella of the “EU Aid volunteers” initiative will also help to address their situation. One of the sending organisations is the Slovak ADRA. In addition to this, there are two more sending organisations in the consortium of ten organisations within the HVM project, the rest will be receiving, i.e. visiting, NGOs. The trained and seconded volunteers from the EU will work in crisis regions in the field of psycho-social or medical support for victims of natural and social disasters, project management of specific humanitarian organisations, communication with stakeholders, peace-building and reduction of risks of recurrence, education and prevention of the aforementioned negative impacts of climate change, etc.
It is already common practice abroad for employers to choose from among applicants for a particular position those who have been and are volunteering, based on CVs and during interviews. The desired state of affairs is that these people, on their return from their „mission“, are not immediately employed in the commercial sector, but remain with an NGO that implements humanitarian projects, or with an institution that finances and makes decisions on humanitarian crises around the world. So in this way, humanitarian and development organisations like our ADRA are building their own internal capacity.
However, it is also important to transfer experience and knowledge to other partner organisations working in the field of humanitarian aid, development cooperation and global volunteering. There are just over three dozen of them in Slovakia. Capacity building of both sending and receiving organisations in the management of humanitarian volunteers was one of the objectives of the two-year HVM project. A few weeks ago, ADRA completed another part of it - by being certified by the European Commission to send humanitarian volunteers through the EU Aid Volunteers initiative as a safe and quality sending NGO.
Taking care of the steps before volunteering
A quality sending organisation should keep the following steps in mind for the effective implementation of a volunteering programme: Have a reason and a strategy for sending volunteers; Communicate actively with the host/receiving organization in mapping their needs and requirements for a volunteer; Build a „job“ description in advance with the desired qualities of the candidates for the position and develop the volunteer job description (be able to adapt it during the placement); Conduct volunteer recruitment through recruitment, screening of potential candidates to personal and personal interviews; Once recruited, provide an orientation to the organization as well as a comprehensive several-week pre-departure training. For example, ADRA does this through a two-month in-person internship in our office before the actual placement departure.
Furthermore, it is necessary to have the necessary documentation ready: methods of monitoring and evaluation of the stay, a communication plan, but especially a safety manual and an action plan in case of danger, security risk and threat to the safety of the volunteer; Provide supervision and support to volunteers in the form of mentoring; Take an interest in the implementation of activities and resolve any situations, conflicts; During the stay, and after the return: To try to maintain cooperation with the volunteer; To analyze the stay, the specific activities of the volunteer and to evaluate the volunteer objectively; To give but also to get feedback (do not underestimate the monitoring and evaluation of the volunteer's activity); Not to forget to show appreciation for the efforts or achievements.
We tried to present all these steps to the partner organisations in the NGO consortium of the HVM project. At the same time, we not only lectured and shared examples from our volunteer practice, but we also listened, discussed, created training materials and learned a lot during the trainings. We adapted our existing strategies, action plans and documentation to new experiences and trends in the field of volunteer management. We have created new training modules that will be used by partner organisations for internal training of male and female staff, as well as for training future humanitarian volunteers.
Ensure pre-departure education
During the existence of the HVM project, we have discussed a lot about the methods of education. It is important to choose the right form for its success. Education can take place on the job, in a specific workplace, in the form of instruction, coaching, mentoring, consulting, assisting or assigning a task. But methods used outside the workplace, such as demonstrations of a specific task, case studies, workshops, brainstorming, simulating an event or role-playing, are very effective. As this is an ongoing process, it often serves as a prevention against routine or burnout - because it changes people's working behaviour, levels of knowledge, skills and motivation to be active and creative. It should not be forgotten that this is adult learning and two-way communication. Therefore, during the development of the training modules in the HVM project, we often worked with case studies, stories from practice, brainstorming in groups, rotation and exchange of roles in the team, and also simulations of possible situations (not only in the case of safety). They will also have a place in the pre-departure training for the seconded „EU Aid volunteers“ themselves.
Unified pre-departure training of humanitarian volunteers occupies an important place in volunteer management. It is important that the young people deployed receive the necessary information prior to the actual placement. They will then use the necessary knowledge and skills in the field. This includes, for example, a comprehensive information package on the principles and priorities of humanitarian aid, international humanitarian law; a basic insight into the functioning of the European Union, its institutions and its activities and interventions in the world; and the management of personal safety and health at work (plus psychological first aid for signs of stress or burnout). There are also training modules on project management for both junior and senior volunteers, taking into account their expertise and level of experience, as not all of them are familiar with how the project cycle works in a humanitarian mission.
Important intercultural sensitivity and ethical communication
When training the internal staff of the organisation as well as future volunteers, a training module on intercultural sensitivity (with regard to gender, science, social status) and the necessary competences in the culturally different environment of the host developing country is important. ADRA strictly follows these rules to avoid misunderstandings in the field when communicating with local people - partners or beneficiaries. We don't even want to believe it, but inappropriate dress or incorrect greeting in an ethnically or religiously different community of people can really undermine the partnership built over many years and the implementation of the whole project.
At ADRA, we also place emphasis on quality external communication with donors, project partners, beneficiaries, as well as with the media and the general public. Responsible reporting using ethical principles of portraying humanitarian and development issues in the media is emphasized throughout the volunteer cycle. In practice, this means respecting the dignity of local people and not using poverty marketing (also known as „poverty porn“) to present experiences from the Global South. Enough emotionally blackmailing photos of scantily clad and starving children have already been published.
Provide supervision, attend to feedback
Even though humanitarian volunteers will not be officially on the payroll of the sending organisation, they do have some responsibilities - so it is important to remember the necessary supervision and support from both the sending and receiving organisation. Feedback must be based on facts, obtained from analysis of the assigned „work“, observation of the volunteering activity, checking the timetable and monitoring reports, from an evaluation questionnaire or a face-to-face/online interview. Constructive comments from the supervisor can help the volunteer grow personally and professionally and perform better in the host organisation. After all, volunteering reflects the activities of the organisation as a whole. Therefore, it is important for the supervisor or volunteer coordinator, as a mentor, to keep track of what and how the people sent on their behalf to communities in the developing world are doing. And also how they describe their volunteering placement on blogs and document with pictures on social media.
The aim of the HVM project was to strengthen the participating organisations in the field of: safety in humanitarian aid, both for the organisation and for the volunteer. It is also important to gain practice in doing needs analysis and logistics in order to ensure that the humanitarian mission of the volunteer or volunteer is fulfilled. Volunteer management itself is also about ensuring a lasting impact on the management of humanitarian volunteering through an online platform, as well as motivating other organizations to take these steps. We believe that this has been achieved.
The partner organization ADICE (HVM project leader) has created a trio of educational videos that will help sending and receiving organizations, as well as the humanitarian volunteers themselves and the local community to better understand the principles of volunteering in the Global South. Especially those who do not like to read long theoretical articles and prefer to look at animated pictures will find it useful. The first video concerns the provision of quality volunteer management as a whole, the second video concerns the selection of suitable candidates for their stay in a low-income country. The third video was directly about the safety (and dealing with potential risks) of the volunteers deployed in the field, as this is very important to us. The videos can be viewed on the YouTube channel of our organisation ADRA Slovakia.
Text: Boba Markovič Baluchová, Photo: ADRA team, HVM project
Note: The Humanitarian Volunteering Management (HVM) project is implemented thanks to the financial support of the European Union under the „EU Aid Voluneers“ volunteering initiative.
The article was originally published in the journal Advent 10/2018.
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