Working with refugee populations can present very specific challenges. Discuss how organizations and individuals can work to make sure that they are addressing the specific needs and desires of the communities they aim to serve while avoiding harming their clients.
- How can organizations that work with refugees be sure to institute best practices within their communities and business models, especially when relying on volunteers?
- How can collaboration with refugees and refugee communities be instituted within business models? Is this important?
- How can these organizations strengthen communities as well as individuals?
One of the biggest barriers nonprofit organizations face when working with volunteers is the capacity of the organization to manage onboarding of volunteers. Tech can play a big role in supporting and faciliating this process. For example, at our organization, we use a Google form to have volunteers submit applications. Once volunteers complete their applications, volunteers then receive an automated email (we use Zapier to make this happen) welcoming them to our organization and thanking them for their committment to supporting refugees. This also includes a link to our short, online volunteer orienation. Once volunteers complete the orientation, our staff receive a notification. This allows our staff to now focus on volunteers who we know are more likely to be committed.
Something that we have found advantageous at my org is being flexible with the type of volunteer opportunities we provide. It's important to consider the individual's strengths, wishes, and capacity. We want to make sure that the volunteers work if fulfilling, so it does not start to feel tedious. We do our best to offer translation, administrative, and editing opportunities, among others. Of course, this can be time-consuming and scalability may be an issue but is a good practice in small/med sized organizations.