This presentation was prepared for an IRMA global teleconference on December 4, 2009.

This is the narrative I wrote when nominated for the 2006 UN Online Volunteer of the Year Award. I did not get the award but another volunteer from Nabuur was one of the 10 volunteers to receive the award.
In 2005 I decided to take a break from the hectic London life and to move to Thailand for a year. I arrived in Bangkok in February 2006 and after a couple of months holidaying around, I decided to devote some of my free time to voluntary work.

I have often been involved in voluntary work. I believe volunteering is a civic duty which origin goes far back in time when small communities were helping each other in difficult times or hostile surroundings. With nation building, social progress and technological developments, helping each other has become less of a necessity in people’s mind; society is here to provide. But everyday life shows us that this is not the case and that we still need to help each other on a voluntary basis.

Whilst in London I was volunteering for The Food Chain, a registered charity whose mission is to improve the health and well being of London’s population living with HIV by alleviating hunger and malnutrition. I started as a navigator, helping a driver delivering meal on Sunday. I quickly became involved in the management of the organisation. Between 2004 and 2006 I chaired the Fundraising Subcommittee contributing to the organisation of fundraising events and managing other volunteers. Previously I volunteered as a tutor helping young French student in difficulty at school and was also a supporter of Survival International.

In Thailand, because English is not the first language, online volunteering was the best option for me. I can do it from home and have no problem contributing everyday if needed. After much research on the internet, I found the United Nations Online Volunteering website and my attention was caught by a Nabuur advert seeking online community facilitators. I checked the organisation website and decided it was something I could contribute to and joined in April 2006.

Nabuur is the first online organisation I volunteer with. Its mission is to give communities in developing countries access to their global Neighbours via the Internet and through these neighbours to the huge reservoir of resources (knowledge, solutions, energy, creativity) that is available elsewhere. I choose this organisation for several reasons.

Nabuur is an online community and Nabuur’s assignments involve communicating with other volunteers. Our activities as volunteers are not performed in isolation (such as other volunteering opportunities of translation or researching information). This fundamental feature of the organisation allows for a lot of interactivity between volunteers and makes volunteering very attractive and motivating.

Nabuur offers a direct contact between the people who help and those who are helped. There is no red tape and working for Nabuur is working directly with the people in need. There is an ongoing dialogue between the online community and the real community.

Nabuur works from bottom to top. It is the real community that comes with a problem that the online volunteers will try to solve, not the volunteers that tell the community what it needs. In all project, the community leads.

Nabuur offers work opportunities related to all kind of issues such as community development (agriculture, education, income generation…), health (Water sanitation, HIV/AIDS, nutrition…) and social issues (Gender, Youth…). The volunteers join a particular “village” because they feel close to its location or because they have a strong feeling for the issue at stake. As a volunteer I am both facilitator in one village and members of other villages, increasing the possibility for me to expand the field of my knowledge.

Nabuur presents the community it helps with professional solutions not just quick fixes. It is important to provide communities with real solutions otherwise they would be disappointed by the organisation and the volunteers too would be frustrated. If the project is successful, it will translate into a working solution that can be implemented by the local community. The volunteer get the satisfaction to see their project taking shape with regular update, stories and pictures from the community and witness the direct results of their work and involvement.

After joining the organization, I chose the assignment of creating an awareness and training campaign on safe use of drinking water for a community in Uganda. This project offers me the possibility to use my professional skills of coordinator in the role of online facilitator and it also contribute to my personal development as I knew little about water sanitation and Uganda before that.

As a Nabuur volunteer I contribute in four different areas of the Nabuur organization: administrating my village, contributing to other villages, supporting and training other facilitators, and contributing to the development of the organization.

Initially I joined Nabuur as a village facilitator which is a role similar to that of project manager. In this position I am at the junction between the online volunteers and the representative of a local community in Uganda which has asked Nabuur for help. My role is to ensure that the project is on track, that tasks are assigned to volunteers and that regular progresses are made. I also act as a filter between the online virtual community and the local representative of the community. It is important to protect the local representative from to many questions as (s)he and the communities already have enough on their plate. As a facilitator I am also a forum moderator, seeing that the online discussions are focused on solving the problem, and a web host, welcoming new volunteer, introducing them to each other and to the issue and developing a “homy feeling”. I also report regularly on the progresses of the project to the online volunteer and to the local representative.

Soon after I joined two other online villages dealing with a similar issue. This facilitates and enhances the cooperation between villages tackling the same problems and avoid redundancy of work. It also offers an opportunity to share our resources easily.

We quickly found out that the problem of our community in Uganda was going beyond awareness of safe use of drinking water but that the community was lacking of clean water and did not have the skills or knowledge to produce it. But after only a few months, the 25 volunteers of my villages have achieved quite a lot. We have identifying several methods of water sanitation, we have surveyed the skills and assets of the community, and we have surveyed the various sources of water available as well as the general quality of the water. We are now in the process of selecting the best and most relevant water sanitation methods for the community and we also started work on the awareness campaign.

Besides working for real communities in need, I also contribute to the online community by providing other facilitators with management and coordination skills and help training them. As a professional coordinator, I share my experience with other facilitators who may come from very different way of life. Recently I ran a technical tutorial on producing newsletters, an essential tool for the communication between the facilitator and its volunteers but also to share the achievements of the project with the online community and the local representative. I will soon run another tutorial on using a Wiki tool for collaborative writing and project management. I also provided other facilitators with sample letters for inviting new volunteers and welcoming new members and I have designed an online survey for improving the contribution of the volunteers.

Finally, I am contributing to the future development of the Nabuur concept and of the Nabuur project. As members we are welcome to contribute to the organisation of Nabuur and I have made several suggestions and proposals to improve the management of the volunteers and the administration of the organisation.

Because I am involved in several aspects of Nabuur, I spend a fair amount of time volunteering online. Most days, I spend two hour online but it does happen that I spend a full day working online. It is a well invested time as I have met some very interesting people who I hope will become long time friends.

I believe that overall I am a driving force for Nabuur. By sharing my knowledge and helping with the training of other facilitators I believe I contribute to improve the performance of the organisations. I am not directly involved in solving all the problems of the 100 and more communities supported by Nabuur but I provide tools, methods, and strategies that will help achieving results. I also hope to be a motivating force for those facilitators who have sometimes to deal with low level of contribution in their village. Most importantly I would like to believe that I am contributing to the creation of a community spirit between all the Nabuur volunteers. Such spirit is fundamental for the success of the various projects currently in progress.

In return, Nabuur helped me realize that the Internet can be a helpful and powerful tool for solving people’s problem. Except for its role as a knowledge base and information source, I used to think that the Internet was a big waste of time and space where people were endlessly arguing on meaningless issue in futile forum. But the Nabuur concept demonstrates that it is possible to organise constructive actions when people of good will are brought together. I am lucky to be in a position where I can give a lot of time to online volunteering but in return, I am learning a lot, discovering new opportunities and broadening my horizon. It probably sounds a bit cliché, but despite living in a global village, bad or poor communication is still the main obstacle to peace and prosperity. Volunteering online gave me a little bit more hope that one day we will be able to really and sincerely help each another, even if we come from different backgrounds and have very different stories because all these differences are invisible online and therefore are not an obstacle to working together.

In conclusion, to someone thinking about volunteering online I would say that it is a very rewarding experience but that (s)he must be prepared to be committed. Unlike conventional volunteering, the Internet does put a bigger virtual distance between the people who need help and those who can provide it. But this does not mean that the needs of far away people are not as important as those of your next door neighbours. Organizations working online are particularly dependent on their volunteers and on their commitment. So join an organization, get involved at your level, give a reasonable amount of your time, it will pay back.

Note: I ended my collaboration with Nabuur in 2007. I remain a strong believer in the Nabuur concept as defined by Siegfried Woldhek, but believe that, as an organisation, Nabuur has not chosen a path that cannot deliver suitable and relevant assistance to communities where it is needed and in a timely fashion.

Both messages were embodied in Bill Gates’s keynote speech:

“We need to put the power to prevent HIV in the hands of women. This is true whether the woman is a faithful married mother of small children or a sex worker trying to scrape out a living in a slum. No matter where she lives or what she does, a woman should never need her partner’s permission to save her own life.”

An Eldis report notes that “a decade ago women seemed to be on the periphery of the epidemic, today they are at the epicentre”. Of the 38.6 million people living with HIV at the end of 2005, nearly half of them, 17.3 million, were women (Unaids, 2006 Report on the Global Aids Epidemic). And of the 16,000 new infections that occur every day, up to sixty percent are now amongst women (ILO).

Empowering women was a central policy goal of both the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 and the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) in Beijing in 1995. Women’s empowerment was emphasised in agreements at the World Summit for Children in 1990, the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the World Summit for Social Development in 1995, the World Food Summit in 1996, Habitat II in 1996, and the fifth-year review of ICPD implementation (ICPD+5) in 1999.

That, ten years later, women’s empowerment is back on the agenda in the fight against HIV/Aids suggests that it has somehow failed to fulfil its objectives. One explanation for the relative achievements of empowerment strategies might be the failure to recognise that empowering women without disempowering men is like giving a moneybox to the poor in the hope that they will get rich.

Obesity is no longer exclusive to the developed world

The reality is a very different. Obesity and its associated diseases – diabetes, hypertension and kidney diseases – respect neither wealth nor class and strike instead into the heart of every society where there is easy access to convenience food, low physical activity and ubiquitous advertisements for sugar-fat-salt-rich food.

Heart disease, stroke, cancer and other chronic diseases associated with poor diet and low exercise have now made serious inroads into the lives of people in poor and middle-income nations. In total, these accounted for 80% (28 million) of the cases of chronic illness in 2005, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which fears that a further 388 million people will die from such illnesses over the next ten years.

Photo by Malias

Across South East Asia, cases of chronic disease are also high, accounting for 54% of all deaths during 2005. The situation in Thailand is particularly serious, says the WHO, which estimates that the number of obese 5-to-12 year olds increased from 12.2% to 15.6% in just two years. Obesity is generally associated with older age groups, but has yet to permeate into poorer areas where the price of convenience food associated with the epidemic is prohibitive.

China, too, has an emerging epidemic with one or two pockets of high incidence. Overall, obesity levels range from under 5% to almost 20% in some areas, according to regional surveys conducted during 2003. Most concerning, however, is high prevalence among the young. In Wuhan Province 8.9% of 10-12 year-olds were classified as obese by the study. Some areas, such as Beijing, also suggest that there is a gender perspective to the epidemic. In the capital more than 10% of 10-12 year old boys were obese – more than three times the rate for girls in the same study.

Responsibilities are divided

The existence of a genetic predisposition to obesity would provide a straight-forward explanation for the world’s growing stock of rotund individuals, but the precise causes of obesity are multiple.

Changing diets have clearly contributed to the development of the pandemic, driven by the move towards food processing that relies heavily on high injections of sugar and salt. Recent research by The Thai Health Promotion Foundation, for example, found that more than 90% of its sample of 700 pre-packed foods to contain excessive levels of sugar, fat and salt – a cocktail that can lead to diabetes and hypertension as well as obesity.

Choice, of course, enables informed individuals to avoid (or moderate their consumption of) foods that are known to have damaging health effects, but bad labeling, the study suggests, does not help in the decision-making process. Just one third of the sample in Thailand, for example, managed to provide adequate nutritional information on their packaging or list ingredients. Where available, say researchers, labels also tended to use small fonts and present information in a way that is difficult to understand. At least part of the blame, therefore, lies with the food industry itself.

Photo by Malingering

Children are most at risk

For now, young Thais have refrained from overindulgence in burgers and chips on account of taste. But tastes are changing and so is the food industry. Pizza Hut (aka Pizza Company in Thailand) has already rewritten its menu to include a Tum Yum Kung (spicy prawn soup) variety. Western convenience food, which contains 3 or 4 times more fat, sugar and salt than healthier local Thai snacks, is now thought to pose one of the greatest dangers to a country of “snackers.”

Catering to oriental taste in order to boost market share is only one dimension of the corporate weaponry. Intensive marketing activity now mostly targets children and changing cultural values now mean that a visit to see Ronald McDonald has become a symbol of growing affluence and status. The price of a Big Mac in Bangkok (the equivalent of USD 1.5 or Baht 60) may cover the food costs of one meal for a family of four, but younger Thais are prepared to splash out on junk-food if it means impressing friends – especially girlfriends. Similar trends are noted throughout many of China’s larger central and eastern metropolises. Shopping malls in Cambodia also house fashionable western eateries that only the privileged can afford.

Obesity ought not to be a problem affecting children, but cases as young as 3 are not exceptional. And for those that then become obese adults the risks (particularly in developing countries) have alarming potential – an increasing susceptibility to illness coupled with reliance on fragile health care systems that may not be able to offer or afford treatment. In China, there is only a very basic social safety net and hospitals are run like profit-making concerns: Only those that can afford treatment receive treatment

Child obesity is expected to soar worldwide according to the International journal of Pediatric obesity, and could start to erode health gains in many countries. Both morbidity and cases of premature death are expected to rise over the next decade costing the economies of China, India and Russian billion of dollars according to the WHO. China alone will lose $558 billion over the next 10 years of its national income due to heart disease, stroke and diabetes. And other important Asian economies – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and others – are fast reaching western levels of development and consumption.

Photo by Robad0b

Political will and increased public awareness will decide whether obesity is here to stay or go, according to Prof. Philip James, the chair of the London-based International Obesity Task Force (IOTF).

“It is noticeable,” he says, “that the public and Ministers readily accept the problem of obesity in adults…..then often and very conveniently blame the individual for their predicament rather than questioning whether their obesity reflects the impact of deliberate policy and industrial developments over the last few decades.”

While the political elite ponder their next move a coalition of five international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – known as the Global Prevention Alliance – has already pledged new action worldwide to combat obesity-driven chronic diseases. Obesity, the alliance says, ranks alongside HIV/AIDS in terms of importance and impact.

“Cutting death rates alone will not be enough,” according to Prof. James, adding that “No health system or economy can afford the cost of spiraling cases of chronic disease. The only way to address this is to recognize the need to revolutionise our approach to delivering healthier diets and reducing consumption of the foods high in fats, sugar and salt.”

Obesity is a new challenge for countries like China, which suffered a major famine in 1961, suffered routine food shortages until the mid-70s and received food aid from the World Food Programme until 2005. But a solution is not out of reach. As many as 80% of the cases of premature heart disease, stroke and type-2 diabetes could be prevented by a healthy diet according to the WHO. Missing only is the political will to legislate, educate and take on the powerful Food Industry.

© Roger Tatoud.

Published online by Chinadialogue

The well being and lives of 600,000 Thais living with HIV (of whom 200,000 are women and 12,000 children) depend on readily available and affordable antiretroviral therapies. Currently, only 80,000 people have access to life-prolonging treatments, with a government target of 150,000 by 2008. If signed and implemented, the FTA would cover issues including trade liberalisation, services and investment, and intellectual property provisions, with dire, long-term consequences for the affordability and availability of drugs, especially in the case of HIV antiretroviral therapies.

Thailand and the US have now engaged in six rounds of negotiations. The last round, held in January, ended in limbo because of rising political opposition, unacceptable demands from the US and a Thai delegation not prepared to meet its US counterpart of highly skilled experts and negotiators. Following the dissolution of parliament by Thaksin Shinawatra in February, Thailand’s caretaker government is set to continue informal talks, amid questions over its legitimacy to do so.