Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

UNHCR mobile phone usage in refugee situations – pilot project

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SMS as a tool for humanitarian aid is becoming an increasingly common tool, and you can find several examples of this highlighted on the TechSoup Public Computing, ICT4D, and Tech4Good forum branch – most posted by me, because I’m oh-so-interested in this subject.

UNHCR Innovation recently piloted an SMS system in two UNHCR operations: Esmeraldas, Ecuador and San José, Costa Rica. There is an online article highlight its experiences piloting FrontlineButt in San José, Costa Rica and lessons learned. The project, named Ascend, began as a collaboration between Stanford University and UNHCR Innovation.

The goals for this particular pilot were:

  1. How do we best utilize SMS to connect with refugees residing in an urban area?
  2. How do we embed a new tool like SMS in organizations to be sustainable, even after the pilot is over?
  3. What types of utilities does an SMS application need to appropriately handle the requirements of UNHCR and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff?

A few key takeaways were observed: one, the need for message classification to handle a large number of inbound SMS (think Gmail classifying messages as priority or not priority); two, the ability to have a feature rich application to conduct polls and surveys via SMS; three, a focus on visualizing the data received and report generation in order to convey effectiveness to potential donors.

Before the implementation of the project, project organizers sat down with four refugees to get feedback to help with this project. The interviews are available here. In short, some key takeaways were:

  • Phone presence – most of the interviewees had mobile phones and used them, though some only used them for family matters. The majority cited mobile phones as a good means of reaching them. There were also two who said it was better to call rather than send an SMS.
  • SMS uses – by and large, most of the interviewees wanted more information on activities and opportunities that were available to them. In addition, some thought it would be a good way to ask questions to UNHCR, ACAI, or Aprode.
  • Challenges faced – the biggest challenges for the refugees upon arrival was surviving in a context they were not used to. In a similar vein, they also found it very difficult to find jobs.

At the end of the monitoring and evaluation phase, UNHCR again contacted the same refugees to get their opinion on the project. These interviews were conducted over the phone and the interviews can be viewed here. The responses were overwhelmingly positive which is a big success for the pilot as a whole.

My favorite takeaway:

Initially we had started the pilot with a prepared list of contacts to message. Sending the blast welcome message explaining the project elicited many responses saying, “Who is this?” or “Why am I receiving this?” After interviewing refugees we began to see a pattern. People were hesitant to trust a message from an unknown number. We ended up tackling this issue by first advertising the number in UNHCR and the other NGOs so that people would become familiar with the project and expect to receive messages. In addition to that, we set up boxes in which people could drop their contact information and we would then add that phone number to the FrontlineButt database. In this way we increased trust in and awareness for the project.

Here’s the full article from UNHCR.

And for some perspective, here’s an article from October 2001: Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy .

When Board Members (& other volunteers) Get in the Way of Much-Needed Change

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“While organizations should be grateful to their hardworking board members, too often members overreach and can have a negative impact on decision making. This is especially true when it comes to marketing, design, and communications, disciplines that seem to attract an outsize share of unqualified participation.”

That’s from When Board Members Get in the Way of a Great Redesign by   for The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and it’s terrific. It not only shows what this interference can look like, it also talks about how to reduce the chances that a board member will derail a well-thought out, well-researched, much-needed strategy for social media, virtual volunteering, better financial management, adoption of new software, a logo change, and on and on. In fact, the advice is excellent for working with long-term volunteers as well, volunteers who may be resistant to change regarding policies and cherished-but-outdated practices.

What a meaningful “thank you” for volunteers looks like

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I love meaningful thank yous for remote volunteers, people who assist an organization but may never get to see the impact of their work firsthand, in-person. Within this blog is a great example of such a meaningful thank you for remote volunteers:

Pies for Peace is ending its long-running bake sale fundraiser for Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon. After 12 years, Pies for Peace volunteers have decided to retire from their fundraising baking. They have been a wonderful fixture at the Forest Grove Farmers Market by Adelante Mujeres, just a few blocks from where I live.

Pies for Peace was never a formal entity: no 501c3 or even a website. The volunteers would just bring the cash from their pie sales directly to Mercy Corps’ Portland office. During its 12-year run, Pies for Peace raised between $40,000 and $60,000 for Mercy Corps (depends on if you count matching-grants). The volunteers also made smaller donations to other groups, but by far, most of the pie-money went to Mercy Corps activities in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of Mercy Corps projects was providing food baskets for displaced populations in Iraq. One of the Pies for Peace volunteers said in this article in the Oregonian:

There was even a little video that [Mercy Corps] showed us of a group of young Iraqis. Because I’m the one who signs the checks, they said ‘thank you, Carol’ from across the seas, and I will never, ever forget that.

Imagine that thank you for the volunteers! Not just a generic thank you, but one that is specific to the group in little Forest Grove, Oregon, baking pies to benefit women in Iraq, one that makes a group of women in one city feel connected to a group of women on the other side of the globe.

If you are an organization engaging with remote volunteers, whether they are baking pies or engaged in virtual volunteering, consider how you could use video to make a simple, personal thank you for a particular volunteer or group of volunteers. It’s an incredible motivator!

 

 

Both Mercy Corps and Pies for Peace would love for a new volunteer, or group of volunteers, to continue making pies, if any of my neighbors are interested…

How will you leverage World Youth Skills Day?

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I love leveraging (exploiting!) days designated by the United Nations for my own program use. Why?

  • Many of the days have a lead agency that builds a marketing campaign around the day’s theme. Any press or others paying attention to that campaign might, as a result, stumble upon whatever it is I’m trying to promote if I’ve aligned my messaging with the day.
  • The lead agency marketing the day often creates a Twitter tag to go with the day, such as #humanitarianheroes for World Humanitarian Day on 19 August. I can use the tag on my own tweets about the activity I want to align with the day and any press or others paying attention to that hashtag might, as a result, stumble upon whatever it is I’m trying to promote.

So, for instance, those that promote volunteer engagement / volunteerism might want to pay attention to this: the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, that addresses issues relating to a range of social, humanitarian affairs and human rights issues that affect people all over the world, proposed 15 July as World Youth Skills Day. “Recognizing that fostering the acquisition of skills by youth would enhance their ability to make informed life and work choices and empower them to gain access to changing labour markets, the General Assembly would, by the terms of the draft text, invite all Member States and international, regional and United Nations system organizations to commemorate World Youth Skills Day in an appropriate manner.” Here is the full text of document A/C.3/69/L.13/Rev.1. The UN General Assembly has now approved the designation, though the UN web site doesn’t reflect this at the time of this blog’s publication.

Millions of youth worldwide are unemployed, uneducated and un-engaged: 74.5 million in 2013, the majority of whom live in the developing countries. Teens and people in their 20s aren’t just bored – they are frustrated at how they are locked out of local decision-making as well as economic and life opportunities. These disengaged, disenfranchised youth are a growing concern of governments and various international organizations. For instance, you might recall that, in 2013, I was part of the ICT4EMPL Future Work project undertaken by the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, a European Union (EU) body, to produce this paper: Internet-mediated Volunteering in the EU: Its history, prevalence, and approaches and how it relates to employability and social inclusion. As part of this project, I created a wiki of all of the various resources I used for my research, including a list of “>resources related to volunteering as a contributor to employability.

How could your nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO) or government program that involves volunteers or promotes volunteerism leverage this day?

  • Start asking teens and 20 somethings that have volunteered at your organization, or various organizations, if volunteering has taught them skills or given them experience they were able to use to get a job or to advance in their careers. Ask them if they have ever been asked about their volunteering experience in a job interview. Put together an article to publish on your web site about the comments from these young people. And hold on to this data: maybe you could use it in a grant application to get more resources to help you involve even MORE youth volunteers. Compiling this information would be a wonderful task for a volunteer or group of volunteers – maybe even youth volunteers?!?
  • Be on the lookout for a Twitter tag that might develop in conjunction with this day. I’ll certainly share such as soon as I know about it here on my blog. You can use this hashtag for tweets leading up to World Youth Skills Day that relate to youth volunteering at your organization that are learning skills they need for the work place and adult life.
  • Publish a blog for World Youth Skills Day talking about how and why your organization recruits and involves teen and 20 something volunteers specifically, and how this involvement not only benefits your programs, but communities as well – today and in the future.
  • Think about an event you might be able to host at your organization related to World Youth Skills Day.

Pay attention to the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training and to the United Nations Volunteers programme, part of UNDP, on Twitter and Facebook – those are the two most likely candidates to be the lead agencies for World Youth Skills Day. Even if it turns out to be another UN agency, I suspect UNEVOC and UNV will somehow be involved in activities related to the day. And I’ll share here on my blog what I learn.

Terrific resources you’re missing from Twitter

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I share a LOT of information on Twitter: info on effective nonprofit communications, management or engagement of volunteers, job leads with leading nonprofit and humanitarian organizations, funding leads, updates on UN initiatives in Afghanistan, Ukraine, or anywhere else I care about (and I care about a LOT of places), and more. Often, it’s information I don’t share anywhere else.

I hear a lot of people say they don’t use Twitter because they “don’t want all the text messages.” They don’t realize that you do NOT have to receive tweets via text messaging – that hasn’t been true for many years. I read Twitter via my lap top or my smart phone, primarily – most people do. Also, you don’t have to follow everyone you find interesting – you can add people to different lists and view content when YOU want to (here are my Twitter lists, to give you an idea of how it can work).

Here are my tweets and retweets of the last three days:

 

Using SMS to improve communication between UNHCR, partner NGOs, & urban refugees:

Job: Fellows Coordinator (p2). 12 months in Budapest! Apply here:

We’re looking for someone to join our team as our Fellows Coordinator. Interested? Apply today:

 · 1h1 hour ago

German translation of the W3C document “CSS Style Attributes”

Jayne Cravens retweeted
 

Nice video by about how to speak up safely against in :

 

Watch the most offensive international charity video of the year – Humanosphere

 

Short film asks “What did you pay for when you bought illegal ivory?” Answer: terrorism on African Continent

 

A university center that says it cultivates “innovative thinking” & “entrepreneurship”, etc., has no social media accounts? Harumph

 

Job: in Forest Grove, seeks a Director of Finance and Operations

opened an office in to work with civilians in the conflict zone, the USG Jeffrey Feltman said:

 

Almost 10% of Sierra Leone’s 120 doctors have died of . “Why Sierra Leone Literally Had to Cancel Christmas”

Groups may receive up to 5 stays a hostel for each day members 2+ hours in surrounding community

Just did a little virtual volunteering over on the online forum. How about you?

International Conference on Social Media for Good May 14-16, 2015, Istanbul. Abstracts due Dec 29, 2014

I have said this for YEARS: “Successful Tech Requires An Old-Fashioned Skill: Organizing People”

We’re Hiring! Quality Assurance Analyst -contract position with the possibility of extension and/or conversion.

We’re also hiring a Sr. Project Manager. full time – exempt  To apply:   (plz RT!)

 

Fantastic option: 6-12 months in Ghana with . Expenses paid, excellent projects

Which languages influence wikipedia – & each other (visualization)

 

How languages influence Twitter – & each other (visualization)

 

. mobilizes corporate volunteers to support post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals:

Online mentors helping entrepreneurs in developing countries: and ?

 

Core humanitarian standard launched last week. Check it out

How I keep up re: virtual volunteering: this ework/evolunteer list (also re: telework, telecommuting, virtual teams)

What I hope future USA volunteering reports by will focus on, to be more helpful:

 

Yet again Volunteering & Civic Life in America report focuses on $ value of

 

I consider “Anonymous” a virtual volunteering example, & def. worthy of study:

 

Virtual volunteering in the EU: history, prevalence, approaches, how it relates to employability, social inclusion

CNCS continues its old-fashioned measurement of volunteer value

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logoIt’s happened again: an official government body touting the value of volunteers as coming primarily because of the amount of money nonprofits and others save in not having to pay staff.

Here are the first and second highlights in an email I received today from a Corporation for National and Community Service distribution list I’m on, regarding the Volunteering and Civic Life in America 2014 (which actually is a report on stats from 2013, and only for the USA):

  • Nearly 63 million Americans volunteered nearly 8 billion hours last year
  • This service has an estimated value of $173 billion (based on the Independent Sector’s estimate of the average value of a volunteer hour)

These stats are the very first highlight on their web site as well.

Here we go again: the primary value of volunteers is the dollar (or Euro or whatever) value of each hour they donate – that means the value of their donated service is the money organizations didn’t have to spend on paying staff.

Yes, CNCS looks at some other benefits – about volunteers becoming financial donors, and about how increased volunteering rates may lead to lower unemployment – though, in fact, the same researchers whose study CNCS is using to say this have noted that they did not establish a causal link between volunteering and employment (page 2) . But at the top of every graphic or document about this report is always the same thing: the primary value of volunteer service in the USA was $173 billion. And that’s what we should be celebrating.

What are the consequences of CNCS, as well as other organizations, touting the volunteer-value-based-on-monetary-value as the primary value of engaging with volunteers?:

  • Governments can be justified in saying, “Let’s cut funding for such-and-such programs and, instead, get some volunteers to do it, because volunteers are free labor – they save money!”
  • Corporations can be justified in saying, “We’re cutting our funding programs because these nonprofits should just find some people to do the work and not be paid for it! That will save money. And nonprofits can, instead, create a half day for our staff to come onsite and have a feel-good volunteering experience – it won’t be any extra work for the nonprofits because, you know, volunteers are unpaid, and that makes them free!”
  • Unions can be justified in saying, “We are against volunteering. Because volunteers take paid jobs away.” That’s what the union of firefighters in the USA says – and the CNCS’s use of a monetary value as the primary value of volunteers says it’s right.
  • Economically-disadvantaged people that are being asked to volunteer are justified in saying, “How can you volunteer if you have no income, no money and are concerned about the means to provide your kids with something on their plates every night? With all due respect…I say, ‘Please be serious!’” (yes, that’s a real quote)

All of those scenarios are happening right now in response to calls for more volunteers, as I note in the links above and the links at the end of this blog. And there will more of them as a result of this continued approach by the CNCS and other organizations to always make monetary value as the primary value of volunteer engagement.

How to talk about the value of volunteers? Instead of looking only or primarily at the money value of the hours contributed, CNCS and other organizations could also look at:

  • Are there certain tasks that are best done by volunteers, rather than paid staff? Why?
  • Do increased levels of volunteer engagement lead to or relate to less violence in a community? Why?
  • Do high levels of volunteer engagement lead to or relate to healthier, more sustainable NGOs and civil society? Why?
  • Do high levels of volunteer engagement lead or relate to more voters, more awareness of what is happening in a community or more awareness of how community decisions are made?
  • Does increased volunteer engagement by women contribute to increased empowerment of under-served people and communities?
  • Does volunteer engagement by youth contribute to youth’s education levels or safety?
  • Are there certain kinds of volunteering that have particularly types of impact beyond number of hours given? What is the value of family volunteering, employee group volunteering, tech group volunteering (hackathons), teen volunteering, micro volunteering (micro tasks), virtual volunteering (online service), and other forms of volunteering that are enhanced or reduced in relation to traditional volunteering?

What an important, powerful study that would be that could help volunteers, the organizations that involve such, and the funders that finance the involvement of volunteers (because, of course, we all know that volunteers are never free, right?)!

Also see Initiatives opposed to some or all volunteering (unpaid work), & online & print articles about or addressing controversies regarding volunteers replacing paid staff, a list of organizations and initiatives opposed to some kinds of volunteering (unpaid work), or ALL kinds of volunteering, including unpaid internships at nonprofit organizations / charities. It is also a list of online and print articles about or addressing controversies regarding volunteers replacing paid staff. Most of the links are to initiatives or actions in Europe or the USA.

My other rants on this subject:

Judging volunteers by their # of hours? No thanks.

Research on USA volunteerism excludes virtual volunteering

Do NOT say “Need to Cut Costs? Involve Volunteers!”

UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others make HUGE misstep

Value of Volunteers – Still Beating the Drum

pro vs. volunteer firefighters

Volunteers: still not free

Fight against unpaid internships will hurt volunteering

Advice for unpaid interns to sue for back pay

Should the NFL involve volunteers for the Super Bowl?

I agree with this anti-crowdsource campaign

guide to social media emergency management analytics

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Need a guide to social media emergency management analytics? Humanity Road just published one.

“Emergency Management is a mature field of study but Social Media Analytics is still in its infancy and navigating this field requires an understanding of the opportunities it presents. We are publishing this guide as a helpful tool for emergency managers and decision makers to help them identify and discuss relevant questions in planning their SMEM response. One example of key lessons to include in your own SMEM plan is establishing a baseline for communications activity in your area of operation.”

“We outline two types of application of social media analytics: one as postdisaster assessment and research which aggregates and analyzes data for statistical trending and strategic planning purposes, and the other conducted at the onset, during disaster response, and during recovery phases for rapid assessment and response focused on tactical execution. In general, this guidebook is meant for the latter, although the principles apply to both.”

I’ve been reviewing this for the last few minutes, and it seems absolutely RIGHT ON. Great stuff here – real-world advice, not just theory.

coyote1Have you read this report? Have a comment about this report or about using social media in community emergencies? Comment below!

How many virtual volunteering projects are there?

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I get these questions frequently:

How many virtual volunteering / digital volunteering or microvolunteering projects are there?

How many people are engaged in virtual volunteering?

The answer: NO ONE KNOWS.

vvbooklittleI can say that there are at least thousands of virtual volunteering projects in the world, and MANY thousands of people engaged in virtual volunteering, but I cannot tell you exactly how many.

No one can.

Why can’t those questions be answered? Because no one is tracking the number of projects nor the number of volunteers engaged in such. Why is no one tracking such? Because IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Why is it impossible? Because:

  • Most volunteering tasks – virtual or not – aren’t officially registered anywhere, maybe not even in the organization where they are happening. Individual organizations struggle to count how many volunteers actively engaged with them in any one year! You can’t even rely on web sites where organizations recruit volunteers, since not every organization use such sites – nonprofits and NGOs often use their own web sites and social media channels to recruit volunteers for online tasks, in addition to offline means – announcing the availability of online tasks at an onsite meeting, for instance. I can’t count how many times an organization tells me they aren’t involving online volunteers, and after I explain to them what virtual volunteering is, they realize, in fact, they ARE involving digital volunteers.
  • Many, and maybe most, organizations involving volunteers virtually don’t think of themselves as involving online volunteers, and most people that become volunteers online don’t think of themselves as online volunteers or digital volunteers. People volunteer, period. Organizations involve volunteers, period. Many, and maybe most, organizations don’t distinguish when a person is an onsite volunteer versus an online volunteer.
  • No one can say how many group volunteering events have happened in any given area. Or family volunteering. Or teen volunteering. Or pro bono service. Again – none of these are officially, regularly registered anywhere, and are often not even tracked and recorded within the agency or department that organized such!
  • The terms volunteer and volunteering are contested terms, in any language (not just English); there is not universal agreement on their definitions and they are not uniformly used the same way – if they are used at all by organizations (they often are not). There’s also not agreement on terms like virtual volunteering, micro volunteering, digital volunteering or cyber volunteering. When we aren’t all using the same words regarding online volunteers, how can we even begin to try to count such?

It was a huge challenge for me to do a research paper in 2013 regarding Internet-mediated Volunteering in the EU (virtual volunteering). I made it clear to the EU agency that hired me that I would NOT be finding every organization in Europe engaged in virtual volunteering – I wouldn’t even come close – because it would be impossible, for all the reasons I have already mentioned, plus because of the multitude of languages in Europe. In several weeks reviewing just online materials, with my limited language abilities and Google Translate, I found 60 organizations involving online volunteers – but imagine how many I would have found if I could have visited ever NGO umbrella organization in every country and explained what is meant by virtual volunteering – like so many people that attend my workshops, they would realize that they have been working with online volunteers for YEARS and didn’t know it.

It’s the same with hackathons. Knowbility, in Austin, Texas, has been doing hackathons since the 1990s, but they never called them that – the term didn’t become widely known and used until fairly recently. How many other nonprofits have been doing hackathons for years and haven’t known it?

So here’s what we can say:

  • Virtual volunteering is happening on every country on Earth that has Internet access – both organizations engaging with volunteers online and people volunteering their time online.
  • In fully-developed countries (the USA, Canada, Western Europe, etc.), transitional countries (such as those that were a part of the Soviet Union), and developing countries with a sizable population with Internet access (South Africa, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc.), there are more online volunteers / digital volunteers, and more projects that are involving volunteers, than can be counted. There are not dozens, not hundreds-there are thousands of digital volunteering projects, collectively, in all these countries.
  • Virtual volunteering is a practice that’s more than 30 years old.
  • The USA probably has the largest number of virtual volunteering-related projects and the largest number of online volunteers – but other virtual volunteering hot spots include Canada, Mexico, Spain, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil and India. In Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa are worthy of attention as well.

Also see:

How many organizations involve online volunteers?

Research on USA volunteerism excludes virtual volunteering

When words get in the way (like “Virtual Volunteering”)

Volunteerism research should include virtual volunteering!

Finding out how many orgs are involving online volunteers

Spontaneous online volunteering/crowdsourcing in response to Eric Gardner grand jury decision

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Have you seen the remarkable, spontaneous online volunteering / crowdsourcing that’s happening in response to grand jury decision about the death of Eric Gardner in New York City? There are thousands of tweets with the tag , with various people identifying as white in the USA posting about times they have committed crimes and come in contact with police as a result, and even been confrontational with the police at those times, and how they were not arrested as a result. It’s meant to refute the justifications for police use-of-force regarding the killing of Eric Gardner.

Powerful stuff.

More about spontaneous online volunteers.

 

Fight against unpaid internships will hurt volunteering

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Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz is being taken to task after he recommended that jobless university graduates beef up their resumes by working for free. The central banker made the remarks a day after he told a Toronto business audience that 200,000 young Canadians are out of work, underemployed or back in school trying to improve their job prospects.

Claire Seaborn, president of the Canadian Intern Association, described Poloz’s comments as “extremely problematic.” She said the comments mischaracterize existing employment laws, devalue the abilities of young people and show no sympathy for the socioeconomic issues related to unpaid internships.

Nonprofits and NGOs: you need to be paying attention to this controversy. You need to be thinking about why any task at your organization that is being done by a volunteer – and that includes unpaid interns – beyond “We don’t have money to pay someone to do that.” You need a mission statement for your volunteer engagement and you need to be talking about the value of volunteers far beyond dollar/Euro or other monetary value for their hours!

While I cringe at young people being exploited, told to accept full-time, unpaid work with for-profit companies in order to help their employment prospects, I also cringe at people deriding the idea that volunteering at nonprofits and other mission-based organizations is a great way to gain experience and explore careers. Volunteering IS a great way to gain much-needed experience, insight for a career and references. Not every volunteer is engaging in unpaid service just out of the goodness of his or her heart; many are using volunteering to get experience and references for their résumé, and there is NOTHING wrong with that. So many of the volunteers I’ve worked with have gone on to successful careers in work related to their volunteering – and I’ve done it myself.

For nonprofits and other mission-based organizations out there: in addition to being able to say why a task has been reserved for an unpaid intern beyond “We don’t have the money to pay someone,” are you also thinking about how your unpaid internships might be limited to only certain economic classes, and excluding some people because they can’t afford to give you that many unpaid service hours? Are you thinking about how to ensure a variety of people can undertake unpaid internships with your organization, not just those that can afford to?

My other blogs on this GROWING internship controversy in North American and Europe:

Note that the links within these blogs may not work, as I moved all of my blogs from Posterous to WordPress a year or so ago, and it broke all of the internal links. Also, some web pages on other organization’s sites have moved since I linked to such, and I either don’t know or haven’t been able to find a new location for the material.

coyote1Have a comment? Comment below!