Dubai: The Community Development Authority in Dubai (CDA) on Wednesday introduced seven key initiatives to inspire the residents to give back to the community this Year of Giving.
Ahmad Abdul Karim Mohammad Julfar, Director-General of CDA, said that the key initiatives are based on partnerships, and includes several quality programmes from the CDA 2017-2021 strategy.
“We’ve carried out a strategic alignment for The Year of Giving initiatives to be part of our strategy, which will ensure [their] sustainability and continues performance revision of our initiatives,” Julfar said.
The initiatives will include programmes to promote volunteer work in Dubai, the first one being Volunteering Giving.
Through this initiative, CDA will create new techniques to attract volunteers and develop new agreements with companies and government entities to encourage them to utilise the volunteers’ efforts, thereby reducing the burden on the government budget.
In 2016, Dubai volunteers clocked in 60,000 hours, equivalent to a savings of Dh4.9 million. The number of volunteers in Dubai has actually increased from 20 in 2009 to 5,536 as of 2016. But volunteering rates in Dubai are still low, estimated at 9.2 per cent among Emiratis, according to the fourth Dubai Social Survey 2015 released in December.
Apart from regular volunteers, Julfar said CDA will also call on professionals for the Specialist Volunteering initiative that will help community members benefit from their outstanding skills and experiences.
“Specialist Volunteering is a vital tributary of the sustainable social and economic developments. This includes individuals and volunteering teams, therefore, we are going to establish an integrated mechanism to engage skilled volunteers and organise the volunteering services according to the community and social needs,” Julfar said.
CDA as of 2016 had 34 volunteer doctors and nurses, a few lawyers, journalists, and 10 trainers, who regularly volunteer to serve specific segments of the population. Having more on board will definitely help the community and save the government professional fees so the fundscan be diverted to other worthwhile projects.
Other initiatives of CDA are the ‘Grace of Giving’, which will gather social services packages that will be available for companies from the private and public sectors as well as businessmen to support it.
CDA will work under the Sharing Giving initiative, in collaboration with the concerned entities, for an index for the Social Responsibilities in the emirate of Dubai to evaluate individuals and companies’ participation in The Year of Giving pillars. CDA will work to support this Index with a proposal of a Law on Social Responsibility.
CDA will also dedicate The Society Giving initiative to use the manpower and financial resources of the private, public and non-profit institutions in sustainable programmes to include and support less fortunate people in Dubai.
Those who want to fund the social empowerment and youth development programmes of CDA can donate in the community development fund under the initiative Development Giving.
The Empowerment Giving initiative will encourage community members to take up responsibilities to aid integration of vulnerable groups, embrace them, protect them, and help them to find proper jobs in order to be financially independent.
For the family, CDA will include the Stability initiative that aims to achieve family stability by providing decent, adequate and safe housing for their livelihood.
For more information on how to give back, call CDA at 800-2121 and look for their CSR section.
BOX: 7 KET INITIATIVES
1) To support less fortunate people in Dubai
2) To attract volunteers in all fields
3) To encourage integration and inclusion of vulnerable groups
4) To partner with groups to achieve family stability
5) To gather social service packages to support the community
6) To finance social empowerment and youth development
7) To create an index for social responsibilities evaluation in Dubai
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