Charity and Volunteering in the UAE 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.      Rebuilding mousqes

b.     Rebuilding houses

c.      shelter

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

a.      Philippines

b.     Pakistan

c.      Sudan

d.     sri lanka

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

180 million dirhams

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

• Houses 
• health 
• education

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	Caused by natural
	Crises	Caused by man made decisions
	Rehabilitation	Help
	Infrastructure	Base
	Devastation	Damage
	Public utilities	Service

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

a.      Earth quakes

b.     Storms

c.      Lack of rain

7.              Crescent Volunteers University

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

a.      First aid

b.     Volunteer work methods

c.      The international humanitarian law