On the C@rma 5 tools at the disposal of employees to support Civil Organisations, skill based volunteering is my favourite one and the most difficult to implement (maybe it is linked....)
First of all, this is all new in Turkey and it has been quite difficult to find a turkish translation.... Profesyonel Yetenek or YETKİNLİK BAZLI GÖNÜLLÜLÜK... We solved it by explaining what is was in 10 lines...in summary, the use of professional skills (the ones used every day) in order to provide support to an organisation who would not have the financial resources (or priority) to ask for such a support. Some voices were mentioning that corporate employees would certainly not like doing on their "free time" what they are doing during their working hours....wrong, the survey we conducted in April showed us that, on the contrary, these employees would really find it rewarding to use these skills for another purpose, to see that it can help others as well.
Secondly, it seems there has been some issues with some people using the word volunteer not to pay taxes...hopefully we solved that by mentioning black on white that the volunteer work has no financial compensation and should be done only for a specific, well defined task...
and then, yes, it is about building a trust relationship between an organisation existing since a long time and having been through ups and downs and a "corporate employees" knowing his/her job very good but maybe not at all aware of the constraints and issues of a civil organisations....Rome was not built in one day and guess where the capital empire moved?...in Istanbul! I know it is going to take time before we are really seeing an exchange of knowledge and experience, the project scope will change, the priorities will evolve, the agenda will not always be free but I hope the volunteer and the Civil Organisations will learn to know each other and that it will work out at the end...
Motivations for volunteering are very different but at the end, it is not important as long as the desire for helping is there.
We started with 4 wonderful volunteers, ready to accept the ups and downs of a trial period; They are committed, beyond what I was expecting to be honest. it is unbelievable. One was mentioning he was committed to give a couple of hours and once there made a full plan for the next 4 months :-). I would like also to thank our 4 Civil Organizations which accepted to make the time to try a new experience with a Yabanci.
On my side, I know I should not push anyone.(or not too much..dont ask me the impossible)..just let it go..show what the network would be able to do and hope for everyone that it will be successful.
I am sure some of civil organisations are reading this post...I would be quite interested to hear all their comments, suggestions here or on email.
Next post....all about my experience with spring, scrum, product backlog, next release and...."no, you cant have everything in one spring, you have to prio-ri-ti-ze"
Have an excellent month!