The purpose of this study is to identify the problems that face Omani youth with higher education to participate in the Voluntary National Associations. As most of Voluntary National Associations are suffering from low participation of Omani youth especially those who have high qualification. This research is exploratory and uses questionnaire instrument to gather the needed primary data that is distributed to the target sample (students of Nizwa University). The responses have been analyzed through SPSS software. The main findings of the study are the reasons that make Omani youth unwilling to participate in Voluntary National Associations. These reasons divided in this study into four parts. They are reasons related to students, reasons related to surrounding environment, reasons related to Voluntary National Associations and reasons related to education institutions. Under each reason there are sub reasons. For example, according to Reasons related to students there are sub reasons which are: insufficient time during study, fear of taking responsibility, unavailable of vehicles, conflict between study time and working hours in the Voluntary national organizations and Weakness of their income. In addition, the sub reasons under reasons related to the surrounding community are: lack knowledge about volunteerism culture in the community, sources of information about the programs and activities of Voluntary National Associations are few in the community, weak societal appreciation for the contributions of Voluntary National Associations and volunteers, some cultural patterns in the community, the absence of role models in the community, the prevalence of consumption culture in the community and relying on others, society organizations doesn`t trust in the students participations in voluntary services, poor reinforcement by leaders and businesspersons for participation in voluntary activities, families prevent their children from being involved in voluntary services as they believe that may influence negatively on their future, low media interaction with Voluntary National Associations, weakness of the offered incentives to the volunteers by community and low family awareness of the importance of voluntary services. Moreover, the sub reasons under reasons related to Voluntary National Associations are: insufficient advertisements for the objectives and activities of voluntary organizations, lack adoption of clear programs by associations and social institutions, Voluntary National Associations don`t encourage participating in voluntary works, unavailable training courses, complexities and routine in government control and procedures, poor acknowledgment for the effort of volunteers and most of the activities of the organizations are routine and devoid of innovation and renewal. What is more, the sub reasons under reasons related to educational institutions are: lack encouragement of the students by the administrators in the educational institution, unclear voluntary programs which adopted by the educational institution, absence of courses that have reference to the importance of voluntary services and its institutions, absence of university models in the field of voluntary work, lack of guidance and counseling services, lack of training programs for volunteers and low partnership and alliance between educational institution and national society institutions. Keywords: Voluntary National Associations and voluntary services.
The purpose of this study is to identify the problems that face Omani youth with higher education to participate in the Voluntary National Associations. As most of Voluntary National Associations are suffering from low participation of Omani youth especially those who have high qualification. This ...