09 December 2008

Bonn, Germany: Online volunteers are sharing their professional skills to strengthen human rights advocacy in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.

Online volunteers engaged via the UNV Online Volunteering service have been assisting the Association of Global Humanists and Ethics (AGHE), an NGO based in the remote Northern Areas of Pakistan.

Bastien Bandi, an online volunteer from Switzerland, devised a funding proposal for a Women’s Development Centre that AGHE had established in a village in north Pakistan, with the objective of improving the welfare of women’s families and their status both within the family and within the community.

“I had just left Pakistan where I had worked in the area of child protection," explains Mr. Bandi, who has a Master’s degree in the Management of Development. "Working with AGHE on the development of a proposal was a very positive experience that helped me go further in my understanding of Pakistan and my contribution to the work done there,” he added.

Ria Wilson, an experienced development practitioner from the UK, developed a funding proposal for AGHE’s women and family assistance project, which aims at reducing violence against women. AGHE President Ijaz Hussain said: “Ria Wilson’s role has been very impressive. Even after completion of her online assignment, she is working with us on the women development project as a volunteer.

"She has also planned to initiate a project in the UK for the promotion of women-made handicrafts. We really pay tribute to her attachment with us for such a long time,” added Ms. Hussain. The funding proposal helped the organization get small grants from local donors and to build partnerships with them.

The Afghan NGO Bureau for Reconstruction and Development (BRD) involved online volunteers in a project to enhance the capacity of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in human rights advocacy.  The project involved preparing human rights trainers and establishing a network of Afghan CSOs working for human rights promotion and advocacy.

Online volunteer Filipina Santos from the Philippines has 23 years of experience in rural development. She supported the design of the training programmes for CSO trainers in human rights advocacy and the training curriculum, as well as the establishment of a human rights advocacy network in Afghanistan to foster cooperation between various human rights organizations and volunteers.

A team of five volunteers with backgrounds in law, education and business administration worked together with BRD staff on the development of training manuals. Elena Denisova-Schmidt, an online volunteer, said: ”It was a fascinating and inspiring experience. On the one hand, I was able to build on my professional, scientific as well as personal experience in the area of Intercultural Competencies. On the other hand, I discovered the parallels between intercultural learning and democratic education and experienced that in our team – volunteers from all over the world – we were living these intercultural and democratic values on a daily basis.”

Khan Agha Dawoodzai, Programme Director at BRD, said: “BRD's online volunteers have played a significant role in the development of the organization. The impact of the contributions of its online volunteers is testament to the effectiveness of volunteering online.”