1400 participants in the 10th volunteer day
Feb. 19, 2018 | Outereach
On Saturday, 17th February 2018, KFUPM organized the 10th Volunteer Day Festival under the title "A Decade of Giving". The festival included many programs targeting patients, the elderly, hospitals, special needs, orphans and public facilities.
This festival, inaugurated by His Excellency the University Rector, Dr. Khalid S.
Al-Sultan, at the gymnasium (Building 11), is the largest voluntary activity in
the Eastern Province. It represents the most important university volunteer
work, and is continued throughout the year.
Volunteer Day has become an important event for KFUPM, which is awaited eagerly
by its students, faculty, staff and graduates to prove that university life is
full of other experiences that can be found away from classrooms.
HE Dr. Al Sultan said “Last year, 26 KFUPM students led voluntary teams in the Volunteer Festival organized by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, the MISK Foundation and King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in conjunction with the World Day for Volunteerism. The Ministry of Labor specifically chose the university students to lead the teams because of their reputation for excellence and experience in volunteer work”.
In an atmosphere filled with joy and enthusiastic cheers, the students set out from Building 11 to start the festival, distributed over 33 teams. The youngest participants in the event were Khalid (11 years old) and Faisal Al Hayani (8 years old). They were very happy to participate for their first time and to plant trees with other students in the planting program. Volunteer teams were deployed in other locations in the Eastern Province, including Khobar, Dammam and Dhahran.
The students embarked on diverse initiatives and programs; there was the “Elham”
(Inspiration) initiative targeting children and orphans, and the "Shokren”
(Thank you) program targeting workers including workers of the University Schools.
There was also a program for visiting the elderly, sick, disabled and needy
families.
As the programs differed, the locations of the activities also varied. The patient
visit program was in Dhahran Hospital, while the "Shokren” and “Gares”
(Planting) programs took place at Half Moon.
The Volunteer Work Unit has been actively involved in the continuous development of all volunteer activities. During the year, new programs and initiatives were added. One of these initiatives is the "Alam” (Science) initiative, which targets secondary school students and teaches them some qualitative abilities such as passing the Qiyas test. In addition, the “Ammar “(Construction) initiative was organized by the Department of Architecture, which aims to examine mosques and some public facilities. The new initiatives included the “My Language is My Identity” program. It relies on monitoring the linguistic errors often found in a shop’s signs and design, emphasizing the importance of the Arabic language in our lives.
Volunteer Day had a great impact on students. "I was waiting for this day
to volunteer," says Majid al-Arbash, a student in the preparatory year.
"Although I had the opportunity to visit my family in Al Ahsa, I preferred
not to go there and participate in this event instead. I was very happy with this experience and I
helped to make children happy by participating in the “Inspiration Initiative”.
Mr. Abdul Aziz al-Awfi, a team leader in the “Inspiration Initiative”,
expressed his happiness at participating in the volunteer day. He is eager to
attend every year and this was his seventh participation.
Dr. Saleh Al-Shibl, who made a visit and covered the event with the students, said that the volunteer day gives lessons to people in giving and making people happy, and that when a volunteer participates for the first time, they will have a desire to repeat this rich experience, which also helps the participants to acquire the skills to organize events and involve themselves in community work.
The university can take pride in conducting the volunteer day, and also in the
fact that the event is a full student effort.
Mr. Mohammed Al-Dosari, a student and head of a volunteer unit, said "The arrangement for the festival started six months ago, during which we developed a plan and coordinated with the necessary external parties, and we doubled our efforts during the days leading up to the event in order to get the best results in terms of preparation and arrangements".
The Tenth Festival Figures and Statistics
No
10th Festival numbers
New Initiatives
Developed Initiatives
1
1400 Volunteer Registered online
“ Telaa” (Painting)
“Elham” (inspirational stories + chemistry experiments)
2
300 Janitors in "Thanks” Program"
Science Initiative
Planting Initiative (changing the afforestation goal to reduce desertification)
3
33 projects
Ammar initiative
4
12,000 seedlings
“My Language is my Identity”
5
400 children / orphans
6
12,000 volunteered hours
Dr. Ahmed Alojairi, Dean of Student Affairs, said that the Volunteer Day Festival of has become the annual gift offered by the university members to the people of the Eastern Province.
He added that the activities of the festival feature a range of programs including the maintenance of public utilities, environmental care, children's programs, elderly programs, , the thank-you program (for workers), hospital visits , people with special needs, productive families and a traffic safety program.
