Dubai teenagers create youth volunteering centre

DUBAI // A group of teenagers hopes to create a hub where their peers can brainstorm ways to serve the community.

The Global Youth Empowering Movement - known as Gyem, pronounced "gem" - is run by five young people who want to encourage others to get involved.

Their base is a new community centre near Festival City Mall - a former construction office now painted yellow, orange and red - that opens this month. There, Gyem plans to hold monthly open-mic nights that include discussions on how to use interests such as art, dance and music to serve others.

They also plan to organise major service events once a month. In the pipeline are a talent show with entrance fees going to labour camps and an art sale to buy laptops for children in Africa.

At their first event last year, they promoted recycling at the Terry Fox Run by stationing recycling bins along the route and building a plastic rubbish "tree" where people stapled their empty water bottles and running stickers as a monument to environmental awareness.

Their most recent event, "Graffiti a Tunnel for Hope", drew 500 volunteers to beautify a covered walkway at Festival City, where they painted a zigzagging rainbow, with the word "hope" in English and Arabic sprayed in big block letters down either side. Helpers and passersby filled the walls with pictures of what hope looked like to them: a ballerina, a globe, colourful squiggles …

For the group's first open-mic night this month, they invited musicians to perform. Then everyone threw out ideas on the role of music in volunteer work.

"How can we use music to give back to our community?" Seaon Shin, a 19-year-old American who is a Gyem cofounder, asked the group of 50 students, some reclining on orange beanbags, others sitting on folding chairs or cross-legged on the floor.

One person suggested doing "music therapy" for autistic children. Another wanted to hold a "live jukebox" fundraiser where student bands played songs on request for a fee. The money would go to charity.

Several signed up to help put the ideas into action - including those who had come just to perform or to hang out with their friends.

A drummer in a green beanie offered to volunteer for activities not involving music. "Now that I've seen what it's about," he said.

Ibrahim Qasim, 18, a student at the American University of Sharjah, who came with a friend, said he wanted to attend the next event and take part in the talent show.

"Gyem might be small now, but hopefully it will grow. It has a really good purpose," he said.

With groups like Gyem still in their infancy, young people who want to volunteer here may feel limited by a perceived lack of opportunity, said Rebecca Donaldson, a Fulbright scholar in Abu Dhabi who is researching volunteerism in the UAE.

"Maybe they don't have many organisations they are aware of," she said.

Still, a number of local initiatives aim to encourage young people to help out and connect volunteers with organisations in need of assistance. The Ministry of Social Affairs launched the  "Ana Mutatawa", or "I am a Volunteer", programme in 2008. Takatof, an Emirates Foundation initiative, has thousands of registered volunteers who donate time in hospitals, schools and special needs organisations. Takatof accepts volunteers of all ages, but with a focus on people aged 16 to 25. Schools also often hold charity drives or put together trips for their students to volunteer abroad.

* The National, with additional reporting by Zoi Constantine