Imitating or applying a successful idea in charitable or humanitarian work is a smart approach that can help you achieve quick tangible results.
For example, fundraising campaigns, providing food or health support, building free educational platforms, and charitable drives to support the needy, orphans, the poor, and others.
It is important to ensure that they are appropriate to the needs of our communities, as not everything that works elsewhere is suitable for our local environment.
Often, we need to move away from traditional methods to obtain the necessary support for any charitable project, as thinking outside the box or what they call brainstorming, is important in the field of marketing. Many charitable and civil society organisations lack this policy that makes it difficult to obtain appropriate funding.
I recently visited London and there I learned about a charitable campaign to raise donations - The Ever After Garden - to support scientific research and studies and buy medical devices to treat cancer patients.
The beautiful idea by The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity is to donate a white glowing rose and plant it in Grosvenor Square garden, which has been dedicated to this initiative, for a minimum of £10. The garden will light up thanks to these beautiful roses, and will be open to the public from 3pm to 9 pm. The donor plants it and writes a message in memory of any deceased loved one, or to those undergoing treatments, wishing them a speedy recovery.
This initiative started on November 14 and will continue until December 18.
Organisers of this project hope to collect about 30,000 roses! Imagine if we do a simple calculation and take into account the minimum donation (£10), they will be able to collect £300,000. According to official figures, the association has collected £870,000 since the beginning of the campaign in 2019.
I learned that this idea was taken from South Korea, which started it in 2014, and Britain took the initiative to implement it in 2019.
Cancer has taken many of our loved ones. May God have mercy on those who died from it and heal those who suffer from it.
This is the case of developed countries. They do not claim perfection. They take creative and innovative ideas and apply them when they realise that they are successful and achieve their goals! This is the high-end, intelligent culture that reflects the development of their societies. On the contrary, with us, imitating others is considered absolutely unacceptable.
In Arab and Gulf societies, I say it with all regret and pain, people are stubborn and never think about imitating the many successful ideas.
I would like one of the charitable associations to study this idea. It is not necessary that the initiative should be for cancer patients. It can be for any humanitarian or charitable goal that serves the public interest.
These initiatives receive unparalleled attention from civil society and even expatriates and visitors to the Kingdom.
The weather here will be wonderful for five months at most and it is important to make good use of this period.
On the other hand, I hope government bodies will provide the necessary support to these associations and not put obstacles in the way of these creative initiatives, which are ultimately an addition to the culture of volunteer work. The youth of the country are known for their love of volunteer work, and there are stories of many successful youth projects.
These initiatives are also a source of attraction for many visitors to the Kingdom and have a wide resonance abroad.
Sometimes we don’t need huge budgets to organise these events, but only co-operation between the concerned governmental and private sector and working in the spirit of one team, far from any personal interests.
- Zuhair A Tawfiqi
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