The Minister of Health Dr. Tawfiq Al-Rabiah states that the newly developed Community Engagement Program is designed to boost health endeavors and provide community services in several fields.
During launching (#my_volunteer_health) Campaign, Dr. Al-Rabiah added, "The program seeks to motivate various health charitable contributions, through charitable organizations, charitable support or volunteering celebrated today.
"Today, we celebrate launching the volunteering strategy on the International Volunteer Day. This strategy will feature objectives and plans to ensure wider horizons for health volunteering.", stressed Dr. Al-Rabiah added. Then he extended his deep appreciation to the chairman of (ENAYAH) charitable society Dr. Abdulrahman Al Swailem, and MOH's Director of Community Engagement Program Dr. Ibrahim Al-Hidari. Dr. Al-Rabiah also extended his thanks to MOH's volunteer staff.
This campaign comes in parallel with the International Volunteer Day celebrated annually on December 5th, and covers the whole of the Kingdom. The Campaign brings together 20,000 MOH's staff volunteers, with 40% of MOH's facilities engaged to design more than 2,000 volunteer health initiatives and to implement 30,000 volunteering hours, in order to highlight such endeavors as enhance and empower community volunteering efforts.
Both the Community Engagement Program and the Volunteering Initiative are designed to create an incentive and oriented platform to empower non-profit organizations to effectively contribute to facing health challenges. The Community Engagement Program features four paths, including: organizing and motivating health charitable contributions, developing a health volunteering system for health practitioners, building the capacity of private and non-profit health bodies and encouraging their further expansion, and enhancing individual participation in community health initiatives.
In line with the Saudi 2030 Vision, MOH is implementing the (#my_volunteer_health) Campaign across all health facilities, to foster the culture of health volunteering among MOH's staff. In this regard, Health Affairs, medical cities and healthcare centers will launch volunteering initiatives on the International Volunteer Day, with participation of the facilities’ leaders and staff. In so doing, such volunteering initiatives feature a set of standards, including: It should based on an actual community need. Each facility will launch one initiative at least. Such volunteering initiatives should attract the largest staff participation possible. They should be held after official working hours outside the health facility, for at least three hours. Volunteers shall not receive and financial compensation. Health facilities shall support their initiatives respectively, while they can also outsource sponsors.
Volunteer work is becoming more important in the Kingdom, as it helps reduce the burden on government bodies, overcome bureaucratic obstacles, strengthen national feelings and active citizenship, save and rationalize the use of resources, ensure better understanding of challenges facing the government agencies by citizens.
In addition, this Campaign seeks to secure various strategic objectives, including: building a strategy to activate health volunteering, taking into account the health sector's priorities, as well as the guidelines of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. Prioritizing initiatives in terms of (systems – mechanisms - incentives). Also, it seeks to develop a detailed action plan to implement the strategy, to identify different stakeholders and their roles, to gain insights into the present status of health volunteering in the Kingdom, and to determine MOH's roles in health volunteering and to identify practical volunteer models for health practitioners. In this field, among the key initiatives launched by MOH are the Health Volunteering System project, building the National Center for Health Volunteering, upgrading existing systems, the Volunteer Insurance System, Volunteer Management Enterprise, exchange of Global Expertise in Health Volunteer Management for Masses, Crises and Disaster, Home Medicine and Primary Healthcare Volunteer Programs, integrating learning through (Service Learning) into academic and professional programs, health volunteer for academics, health volunteer in professional and academic programs' accreditation and renewal, skill portfolio of health volunteers, integrating health volunteering into continuous professional development programs, and volunteer service for non-recruited candidates at the Saudi Residency Programs.