By Meg Davis
At 5 pm, the crowd began to assemble
on the square in front of the Messe Wien convention center. Some handed out
signs reading "Broken promises kill" or "we are watching" over photos of giant
eyeballs. Others wrestled in the wind with a black-and-white banner reading "No
retreat, fund AIDS."
By Meg Davis
Next month, Asia Catalyst is supporting a delegation of
Chinese AIDS activists to go to Vienna for the International AIDS Conference. Like
(no doubt) many of you, we've spent a fair amount of time sitting through
boring conference presentations around the world. But making a conference
presentation valuable and memorable is possible. Here are ten tips we came up
with:
On June 14-15, the United Nations convened informal
hearings in the General Assembly for NGOs on the Millennium Development Goals.
The hearings were to prepare states for the more high-profile summit on the
MDGs scheduled for September 20-22. Unfortunately, while the NGO presentations
were diverse and international, turnout by member states was relatively low.
Since March 2010, we've received a flurry of calls and
emails from reporters, donors and lawyers asking about the new regulations on NGOs
in China. Here's our take on the regulations that have been
causing trans-Pacific headaches, and a few thoughts on what this means for
Chinese NGOs in the future.
By Adam Froiran and Meg Davis
This
is the final part from our manual on volunteer management.
In order to run your organization successfully, a
core leadership group can have many advantages.
Training volunteers and employees to develop strong leadership skills bolsters
your organization's opportunity for growth and sustainability. Encouraging leadership at all levels of your
organization allows for a greater sharing of responsibility and translates to
work or projects being consistent, even if somebody has to drop out.
By Josh
Clarkson and Meg Davis
This is part four of our manual on volunteer management
It's not easy to keep up motivation among volunteers, that's why positive
management is essential to making effective use of your organization's
volunteers. Some of the steps detailed below can also help to avoid volunteer
burnout.
by
Meg Davis
This
is part three of our manual on volunteer management.
Now
that you have a plan for the volunteers, the next task is to find them, which
you can do by talking up your volunteer program in social situations, giving out flyers, sending
out emails, posting an ad on your website, or holding volunteer recruitment
meetings.
When
you have found someone who is interested in volunteering, you should have a set
of steps that you can follow for interviewing and "hiring" the volunteer. The
steps should be a procedure that is the same for each person, whether the
volunteer is someone you just met on the street, or a friend you've known for
20 years. Making everyone follow similar steps for recruitment, and having
everyone begin and start at the same time, creates an ethic of fairness in the
organization and avoids the impression that the organization is run by cliques
(more about that in our section on management).
By
Meg Davis
Before
you begin recruiting volunteers, you should come up with an outline of the
projects you need help with, and create a schedule that involves a few
different volunteering opportunities. Different
organizations have different schedules for their volunteer programs. Because
Asia Catalyst volunteers are mostly students, we usually follow a four-month
term.
One
of the issues groups ask us about often is how to recruit and manage
volunteers. Based on our experience (a lot of our work is done by student
interns), and some manuals we consulted online, we are putting together a manual
on volunteer management and posting chapters from it to this blog. Please share
your own suggestions by posting a comment.
By
Meg Davis and Josh Clarkson
A
crackdown on sex workers and related businesses in April and May has resulted
in over a thousand arrests and the shuttering of hundreds of businesses
throughout Beijing, according to news
reports.
