Triggered by a sense of restlessness and an overwhelming desire to find his true calling, Mohammed Al Touqi pressed the brakes on his college life and took tentative steps on the rugged road to volunteerism, beginning with a short stint in Rwanda’s Clinton Foundation. The project involved building toilets, and he soon learnt some basic lessons in life by being a volunteer and living that helped assuage his apprehensions and shape his immediate future.
Following the pause in studies and the ensuing fallout with his father on his scholastic ennui, he’d found a footing at Outward Bound Oman (OBO), working as a facilitator, which, in a way, prepared him for his volunteering vocation. It wasn’t easy to defy conventional wisdom that stresses on academic success to find a well-paying job; it was difficult still to give everything up to take up volunteerism as a cause, he recalls.
But somewhere between his responsibilities at the OBO and the chores he had to fulfil as a volunteer, his passion for human development at the grass roots level came to fruition. And International Volunteers (IV) happened.
While it does sound as easy as that today, the journey has been long and challenging, states Touqi, whose brief homeless state also saw him living with blue-collared workers in a large dormitory here. His willingness to adapt to the situation and his resilience to accept hardships, whether it meant living in squalid conditions in tents and derelict homes or eating the simple gruel and drinking water from the tap in far-flung destinations, turned him into a strong advocate of volunteerism, with clear understanding of the concepts of volunteerism and charity.
Today, alongside the organisational and administration work with his team, Touqi is also involved, on a personal level, in various volunteering projects. He will shortly travel to Nepal to volunteer with All Hands, an international organisation that responds to disasters.
Read more about their activities in the following interview with Touqi: What is International Volunteers all about?
International Volunteers is a social enterprise, which provides sustainable programmes abroad for volunteering, internship missions and working with local partners around the world. It focuses on globalising the youth through volunteer work, travel, stepping out of typical comfort zones and educating the youth on the global and local issues that need attention and support. We also aim to partner with the United Nations to support and educate our youth about the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development which are a series of ambitious targets to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and fix climate change for everyone by 2030.
When was it initiated in Oman?
International Volunteers started as a project in May 2012 and was initiated by Knowledge Oman’s Social Entrepreneurship Development Program on the 3rd July 2016. Knowledge Oman reaches out to empower social entrepreneurs, facilitate nation-wide knowledge transfer and promote Private-Public- Partnerships (PPP) in the country. Our patron is H.H Sayyida Basma bint Fakhri Al Said.
What are the activities/events it is involved in?
Our activities vary from charity hiking trips to volunteering placements for programmes that include teaching in disadvantaged schools, medical and health aid, childcare, orphan care, special needs care, women’s empowerment and girl’s education, community development, gender equality, wildlife and animal care, sports arts and music, construction and renovation as well as environment and conservation. Volunteers can choose the programme they would like to do. As a teen volunteering abroad, the volunteer will engage in meaningful volunteer work, learn about complex social issues, connect with people from different cultures, and journey to places they have only read about in a textbook or seen on a TV screen. The project placements we work with are supervised by some of the world’s leading organizations such as UNICEF (The Children’s Agenda), Save the Children and SOS International, among others, added Touqi.
What is its reach and who are the beneficiaries?
We hope to partner with the Ministry of Higher Education and enable students who are about to graduate, as well as the unemployed youth, to experience volunteering programmes. The youth will benefit from volunteering abroad as it is one of the most efficient instruments of non-formal education. Through volunteering they will acquire new knowledge, competences, as well as soft and hard skills. It increases employability and develops global networks; it also expands their horizons, helps them learn more about themselves and grow as human beings.
What are the main challenges?
The organisation is a unique and first-of-its-kind social enterprise in Oman that aims to inspire and enable Omani volunteers to reach out to the needy in impoverished communities across the world. For us, being the first ones, it is a challenge to educate what volunteering abroad is, as most people tend to ask why don’t you do it here? Oman is a blessed country and we already have great initiatives making huge changes locally.
Another challenge is trying to get sponsorships for our Omani volunteers. Most graduates and the unemployed youth cannot cover the costs; therefore, we hugely seek funds from corporate sectors. Corporate sectors in turn will be supporting young Omanis with interpersonal skills to build their sense of responsibility and to make positive decisions about their education, health and future.
Is the organisation open to everyone? How can one get involved?
Our volunteering programmes are open to everyone. We are currently in the process of setting up our local community here in Oman, where we will do a lot of activities, events and meetings to try to change and the world! Anyone can just subscribe to our website or follow us on Instagram and wait for our announcements for our future volunteering trips.
(www. internationalvolunteers.me; @internationalvolunteers)
