Volunteers can have a powerful ripple effect. In 2003, a team of UN Volunteers in India galvanized thousands of people to form local volunteer task forces to respond to natural disasters. A young Turkish Online Volunteer enlisted scores of others to channel donated education materials to Nigeria to help communities prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Two women in the United States mobilized over 100,000 people and raised some two million dollars in support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to help provide women and their families in developing countries with critical health services.

Each individual act has the potential to multiply many times over, to inspire and engage others, to open doors and thereby to reach much farther than initially imagined. The accumulation of many such acts, large and small, repeated by citizens in all corners of the world, will be key to reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). UN Volunteers are part of this equation. With its mission to promote volunteerism for development and to mobilize volunteers, the UNV programme is committed to help create an enabling environment for volunteerism at local, national and international levels. To this end we work closely with partners across all sectors of society to gather knowledge and research best practices around the world to help stimulate national and international policy debate and to advocate for the recognition, facilitation, networking and
promotion of voluntary action.

In 2003 the number of UN Volunteers again reached record levels. A total of 5,635 volunteers from 162 countries shared their expertise and skills in 144 countries. Many of them mobilized many more volunteers. They formed voluntary support groups for people with disabilities in Samoa, helped enlist youth volunteers to fight poverty in Bolivia, harnessed community volunteering to combat urban violence in Madagascar and supported measures to preserve the environment in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The late Sharon, who is sadly missed by us all, once said, “ in our rapidly globalizing world, citizens’ action can be a unifying force to tackle issues of worldwide concern.” UNV has, indeed, opened new doors for many more people to engage in volunteering for development, for instance through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Participation in the Online Volunteering service, managed by UNV since 2003, has snowballed from a handful to several thousand individuals from all continents who offer their services through the Internet. A university network engages students and faculty staff as volunteers in building ICT capacities in developing countries. It has grown to include institutions in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

The WorldVolunteerWeb, launched to take forward gains made during the International Year of Volunteers 2001 through expanded networking and knowledge management, has established itself as a global Internet volunteer resource base – and provides thousands of visitors with information on opportunities to contribute to achieving the MDGs. Time and again, volunteers reach far beyond our expectations and help us take major steps forward. Just think of the ten million volunteers who made possible the immunization of 550 million children as part of the 2000 Global Polio Eradication Initiative and the over 100 million women and men who volunteered their time through the Internet to effectively campaign against land mines. Volunteers are global citizens; there are many more out there and there are scores of opportunities for them to engage in. No doubt, trying to achieve the Millennium Development Goals is highly ambitious. But so are volunteers.