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By our reporter, Lafia
The Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS) has called for more volunteers to tackle the humanitarian needs of the vulnerable population of Nigerians.
Mr Benson Agbro, Director, Disaster Management, NRCS said this on the sidelines of a two-day National Inception Workshop held in Keffi Local Government Area of Nasarawa State.
He said that the 800,000 volunteers presently offering service for the organisation were insufficient to meet the vast humanitarian needs of millions of Nigerians.
The workshop was organised in collaboration with International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (IFRC), with the theme “Volunteerism in Action”.
The workshop which is a pilot will be replicated in other parts of the country, It had in attendance 50 NRCS participants from Lagos, Ekiti, Anambra, Benue, Sokoto, Taraba, and Edo states.
Agbro emphasised that given the different humanitarian crises facing the country, the organisation’s present manpower and volunteer population were insufficient to render support to the vulnerable Nigerians.
He said this development informed the Headquarters of NRCS to commence the National Inception Workshop project to equip participants with the needed skills to attract new volunteers to provide adequate aid to vulnerable Nigerians.
He added that participants would be trained on capacity to recruit new volunteers and how to retain, manage, and motivate the new volunteers.
“Our target in terms of recruiting new volunteers to meet the needs of Nigerians is as much as we can get, because in some countries they do not just serve their country but also serve their neighbouring countries.
“In the West African Sub-region, we can see a lot of disaster incidents. Nigeria should be able to post volunteers of the Nigerian Red Cross to serve neighbouring countries, especially in cross-border incidents,” he said.
Mr Sidney Osawaru, National Youth, Gender and Volunteer Adviser, NRCS harped on adequate human resources to effectively carry out its mandate of responding to the victims of disasters given the huge population of Nigeria.
He, however, said regular flights of NRCS volunteers abroad for greener pastures are responsible for the shortage of the needed human resource to adequately cater for the humanitarian needs of the country.
“Here in Nigeria, we have a lot of disasters, including floods, conflict, and other man-made disasters, victims of these disasters need adequate support from volunteers.
“We have mapped out trainings for other states that are not captured for this training, our target for the recruitment drive is not less than 10,000 new volunteers from each state,” he said.
Also speaking, Mr Uchechukwu Okoro, Director, National Society Development of the organization said the workshop would position NRCS to develop a framework for volunteer recruitment, engagement, retention, motivation, and sustainability.
Mr Joel Adeyi, Senior Officer, National Society Development, (IFRC) while applauding the initiative, said the essence of the collaboration with NRCS was to have a robust discussion toward recruiting more volunteers as well as to expand their volunteer base.
Miss Nsikakabasi Edet, a participant and Deputy National Youth Chairperson, NRCS described the workshop as an eye-opener, noting that it has exposed new ways of recruiting and maintaining new volunteers.
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