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Rolling
up their sleeves, mixing cement, carrying water … The programme, undertaken with the support of Habitat’s UK office and UK-based Charity Challenge, has seen CEO’s, directors and executives at different levels of management roll up their sleeves and sweat it out at worksites in the south building houses, guided by experienced local team leaders. A spokesperson from Sri Lanka’s Habitat office said the 7-day work trips are entirely funded by global companies ranging from Citibank – which brought in staff from UK, the US and India -, investment banker Merrill Lynch, garments buyer GAP, Bank of Halifax, Scotland to international news agency Reuters, and many other firms. Volunteers have said the experience of seeing poverty first hand while living in a needy community and directly improving people’s lives is so powerful, that they volunteer again and again and spread the word to others. “They come and live and work on the site and get an experience of a lifetime,” she said. The teams of each around 12 to 15 members arrive on a Sunday, start work at 6 am at the site on Monday; return to Colombo on Friday/Saturday for assessment/evaluation; fly out on Sunday; and return to their overseas workstations on Monday. Two weeks ago volunteers from the Bank of Halifax told Habitat officials that “it was a rewarding experience for them.” Last week the first phase of the programme ended with the next set of volunteers due to arrive in March in the second phase. The Habitat spokesperson said while CSR is a buzzword in Sri Lanka, this experience of working on sites and providing unskilled labour was useful for staff from local firms to follow as a more hands-on experience of CSR and team/community building. Habitat, an international NGO involved in building homes for the poor which has now expanded to housing for tsunami victims, said this volunteer programme cuts the cost of building houses and also demonstrates love for the community through these actions. “These simple, decent homes are perfect for volunteers because house construction requires a great deal of unskilled labour such as excavation, foundation work,” the spokesperson added. Most of the work is done in the Galle district. The average tsunami recovery house being built by Habitat in Galle requires 47.25 days or 378 man-hours of unskilled labour to complete. A 12-member team working 32 hours a week can provide all the unskilled labour to complete an entire house. Short-term volunteers who haul water and mix cement reduce fatigue on the local paid labour, Habitat said. Charity Challenge, UK’s leading charity expedition organizer, organized the teams — one per week for six months. Volunteers come from consumer, financial and media giants with offices in the UK and their branch offices in other countries. “Corporate partners have always been drawn to the team-building experience and employee enrichment that working on a Habitat site provides,” Ian Walkden, executive director of Habitat, UK was quoted as saying in a statement. He said one programme ended with a “CEO build.” Chief executives and their spouses (and two daughters of one exec)—19 volunteers in all—spent a week building with two families in Balapitiya. In addition to dedicating one home on their final day on site, the team members gave a staggering US$53,000 donation of funds they raised. Habitat plans to build training centres and some 1,600 houses to shelter roughly 8,000 Sri Lankans who lost their homes in the tsunami. Another
Habitat official said most (global) companies now actively encourage
employees to volunteer. “It’s the right thing to do,
and it’s ultimately good for business: companies thrive if
communities in which they do business thrive, and employees return
from volunteering refreshed and thinking creatively,” he added.
Teams in addition to paying their way, often donate much-needed
resources, such as hand tools and office equipment, to the affiliates.
(Feizal) |
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