L'actus
du Pro Bono
Pro bono around the world - Hamza, Saudi Arabia
Pro Bono Lab launched in 2020 the study "International Panorama of pro bono". Its objective : analyse the diversity of practices around the world. Discover the testimony of Hamza, who works for Haron for pro bono services in Saudi Arabia.
Pro Bono Lab
24 févr. 2021
Hamza Jadkarim is assistant consultant and project manager in Haron for pro bono services, a pro bono organization in Saudi Arabia. Their role is to make a connection between the private sector and the third sector, to convince the private sector to allow its employees to share their knowledge and experience in order to help and assist charitable organizations. On the other hand, we are working with charities to define areas where experts can help them build their capacity.
They're also working in the higher level with the government to enhance the concept of pro bono in the national ecosystem of volunteerism in Saudi Arabia.
1. Tell us more about the national context in which your organisation operates
The culture of volunteering is quite narrow about considering pro bono as an effective way of doing community volunteering. This refers to the traditional way in which volunteer opportunities are managed by non-profit organisations and the low level of volunteer involvement. Companies should be aware that pro bono can enrich CSR activities and community engagement.
We face a challenge in building our financial sustainability model to develop our projects through different stakeholders.
[In 2019,] we carried out more than 90 pro bono projects involving more than 100 volunteer experts.
2. If you had one legislative measure your government should put in place to facilitate the work you do… what would it be?
Put in place a system to count employee volunteer hours as the company's economic contribution to the community.
We believe that pro bono is a very important concept to be well known in Saudi Arabia, as many experts and sectors do not know or dare to participate in volunteer activities in general.
3. What are the different activities that you put into place within your organisation?
Concerning the beneficiaries of pro bono services, we work with two kinds: charities are our main field of action and the second one is new entrepreneurs, we are working with business incubators. We call upon the experts of our clients in the business sector. We have agreements with the departments of many companies and banks and we are encouraging them to let their employees help these charities and entrepreneurs in many types of projects.
Some of them are short term such as phone call advice, or the Marathon which is a 6 hours workshop bringing together 3 to 5 experts.
Some projects are long term, such as the coaching model and the teamwork model which last for 3 to 6 months by joining 3 to 5 experts who help charities.
Also, we organize some seminars to increase the awareness of the pro bono for charities in many different cities in Saudi Arabia. We go to a city and invite all charities to participate in 2 hours seminars to increase their knowledge about pro bono and to let them know how to get the experts to help them in their work.
When we started in 2014, we conducted a survey of more than 60 companies and over 200 charities [...] to convince our clients and charities that we would find solutions for both parties.
4. What is the assessment of your activities last year (2019) ? Do you have any inspiring examples to share with us?
Last year, we carried out more than 90 pro bono projects involving more than 100 volunteer experts. Some of our volunteers came directly from the companies we work with and others came from a call for volunteers from the public community and signed with us. Then we follow the usual process to match with the expertise that we need. Each year, we carry out almost 90 projects.
We have a national target and KPIs to have one million volunteers per year when we reach 2030
5. In the survey, you said that you have volunteers from the public sector : can you tell me more about it?
In some of our projects with charities, when we are making a call for volunteers to sign and join us, it is not only experts from the corporate sector who are involved, some of them work with the government and some of them with the third sector also.
We see an advantage in involving employees from the third sector to help the third sector by itself, because they know the regulations and the situation. The solutions they find might fit more for the charities. That’s why we also encourage workers and experts from all sectors to join our project.
Last year, one of our projects was with a bank in the corporate sector and the Ministry of Health. The purpose was: How to make a pro bono project with charities working in the health sector (child cancer, obesity, smoking)? The collaboration was between us, the corporate sector for sponsorship and the Ministry of Health to guide the work of charities working in this area.
6. How do you match volunteer and non-profit?
We have a deal with the corporate sector or foundations to carry out a pro bono project. We make a call for charities and area they wish to work with. After they signed the application, we make a visit of these charities and meet the CEO and department managers for 1-2hours to clarify needs and establish priorities. Then we launch a call for volunteers to cover this need. Sometimes, we don't have a project in a given area.
Charities contact us by e-mail or phone and ask for volunteers. We have a database of more than 1000 volunteer experts, so sometimes we are arranging a match with volunteers in the same city to enable them to visit the charity directly or to arrange an online meeting or by phone.
We arrange for the charities that are familiar with the concept of pro bono to join us before a project to find out how to manage the project with the volunteer experts.
We made a manual contain 14 ideas for remote volunteering to encourage individuals do volunteering from their home during COVID-19 situation in pro bono.
7. What kind of skills do you mobilize?
Many skills are in the field of management, human resources, information technology, strategic planning, project management, also on the legal side. We bring together experts in these fields but not in technical fields such as engineers or doctors. However, we are not talking about soft skills, but only hard/technical skills.
When we work with companies, employees join us for several years for some and then contact us directly afterwards to work and help. They need someone to encourage them and offer them good opportunities to share their skills.
8. You are conducting research activities : can you tell us what they consist of?
When we started in 2014, we conducted a survey of more than 60 companies and over 200 charities. The aim was to study the situation, the demand for pro bono projects and the issues of charities and companies. It was also to study the future they would like to achieve with pro bono. We sent out a survey and met with both companies and charities. This was the main study we did before our project to convince our clients and charities that we would find solutions for both parties.
9. Have you adapted your activity to the coronavirus situation?
The companies froze all the contracts with the areas that are not directly related to the COVID-19. So we’ve held online seminars to encourage them to involve experts in finding solutions. We are also working on developing a platform that will allow us to provide direct online projects, such as organizing conference calls. We are connecting entrepreneurs, as they are facing many challenges in their business right now, and experts through virtual meetings to give them some assistance. For charities, we have some opportunities but until now we’ve not started yet.
Also, we made a manual contain 14 ideas for remote volunteering to encourage individuals do volunteering from their home during COVID-19 situation in pro bono.
10. Why is pro bono / skills-based volunteering important according to you, and why will it be even more relevant in the future?
We believe that pro bono is a very important concept to be well known in Saudi Arabia, as many experts and sectors do not know or dare to participate in volunteer activities in general. On the other hand, charities need to be encouraged and have access to these experts as their different experiences may be similar. We believe that bringing together the expertise of experts from business and government to help charities fulfill their missions would have an important impact on the way they work. With the current demand for quick changes, charities need to adapt. With pro bono, solutions come from expert volunteers without financial load on charities. We want to provide opportunities for both sides.
When we work with companies, employees join us for several years for some and then contact us directly afterwards to work and help. They need someone to encourage them and offer them good opportunities to share their skills.
Now, the government of Saudi Arabia has a vision for 2030, a plan to increase the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the third sector from less than 1% to 5%. We have a national target and KPIs to have one million volunteers per year when we reach 2030. Each year we will need one million volunteers. So we believe at Haron that if we increase pro bono volunteering, it means that we will increase the economic value and help to reach the country’s goal of increasing the GDP of the third sector at 5%.
Now companies are much more aware that we need to give more to the community. We tell them that volunteering is a good tool to give back to the community, especially by working with charities to build their capacity. So it's not just about giving hours to the community, it’s also about helping charitable organizations that help beneficiaries in the community.
11. Do you have new projects or perspectives?
In Saudi Arabia, the concept of social enterprise is new and one of the challenging goal is to establish a huge number of new social enterprises across the kingdom by 2030. We therefore believe that this goal is also a good opportunity to encourage pro bono to help entrepreneurs establish social enterprise projects that find solutions to community issues with the mindset of the corporate business.
We are currently supporting three projects supported by a foundation, and they are asking us to help these social enterprise projects by bringing in experts to provide advice and mentoring. So we believe that working not only with charities is a good opportunity to grow and expand our work. The social enterprise concept would be a great opportunity for us to expend our work in Saudi Arabia.
© Photo by YUNUS A KHALIFAH on Unsplash
