04 November 2002

Cairo, Egypt: Building on the momentum of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV), a research proposal on ‘Volunteers and Volunteerism in Egypt’ was developed by the Center for Development Services and the United Nations Volunteers programme in Egypt.

Thanks to the generous contribution of Japan for IYV follow-up workshops, both the Center of Development Service and the United Nations Volunteers Programme in Egypt seized this opportunity to present the research proposal to a representative sample of stakeholders in the area of volunteerism in Egypt.

The research aims to measure volunteer action across Egypt. The workshop was found to be a great opportunity to make this research more participative and transparent but also to use it as a reason for gathering participants
sharing a great interest in volunteerism.

Some 15 organisations were represented during the workshop, which made the whole discussion more lively and interesting. Representatives from NGOs, grassroots organisations, education system, private sector, Embassy, International Volunteer organisations, students and volunteers themselves were present at the workshop.

This one-day workshop aimed at facilitating participation from all present thus
avoiding one person presentation. The ‘Open space technique’ was used as the best means of brainstorming, allowing all participants to take part in more than one group by moving from one to another. It is important to note that when applying this technique, both the person running the discussion and the record keeper should be quite adamant.

Participants broke into three working groups to discuss the research proposal itself, best practices of volunteer work in Egypt and support to the research and follow up to the workshop.

This report presents, in Section 1, the summary recommendations and statements or decisions made by the participants during the workshop. Section 2 attempts to summarise the discussions that took place during the day, either in the plenary or in the working groups. The agenda of the workshop as well as a list of participants are attached at the end of the report for information.