The state of volunteerism in Ethiopia
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research is carried out under the title of" A State of Volunteeri sm in Ethiopia". The
research aimed at investigating the lega l, in stitutional, socio-cultural context in which
volunteerism is being practiced and in addition, development programs of VI Os is assessed to
see the level of alignment with that of the government development priority areas.
Knowledge transfers from volunteers to local counterparts in host organizations is also one of
the objectives of the research. In order to address the above li sted objectives, primary and
secondary data were collected through employing different data collection methods. Focus
group di scussions with volunteers and also in-depth interviews with six different VlOs and
two host organizations were carri ed out. In Addition, publi shed and unpublish ed materials
including books, researches, laws, policy and development plans, organizations' reports have
been intensive ly reviewed and made use of them.
It is found that voluntary specific law is nonexistent 111 Ethiopia. What exists is the draft
legislation on youth volunteerism which is required to be presented to the Parliament for
ratification. In relation to the legal framework, organizations specific Charters and bi-Iateral
and multilateral agreements have been found to be a binding legal documents for some of the
voluntary involving organizations. It has been also identified that there are very few VIOs
operating in Ethiopia as compared to the total number of civil society organizations in the
Country. Moreover, volunteerism is also identified to be incorporated in only some of the
government sectoral and national plan. On the other hand, it is found that there is a good
level of alignment of VIOs development programs with that of the government development
priority areas. Focus is identified to be given to capacity building and skill transfer from
international volunteers to national counterparts in host organizations.
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Keywords
volunteerism