The 30th Anniversary of the UN Volunteers programme is a celebration of international volunteerism and testimony to the fact that volunteering has come of age. Volunteer service is now as widespread, varied, and innovative in approach as are the peoples and points of view co-existing on this globe. The international community need no longer be sceptical of volunteers' relevance to developing countries' economic needs or of volunteers' contribution to UN efforts to promote world peace. Nor need host governments and local communities question volunteer practicality or doubt the relevance of volunteer expertise.

"Expertise" may indeed be the operative word. With widespread exposure to the skill, experience and track record that form the foundation of increasingly savvy and targeted volunteer approaches - whether hard-nosed technicality or community-based motivation - people everywhere and in every walk of life are taking the concept of volunteer service more seriously and are according it more respect.

UNV has played no small role in this. Long a recognized staple for local help and support, volunteerism has advanced into the international arena. By creating an entity devoted to the operation and promotion of volunteering and giving it identity, autonomy, and a stimulating dose of international limelight, the United Nations raised the profile and emphasized the power of volunteer service.

By initially lodging UNV in the heart of its technical cooperation network, and by expanding its mandate and activities to encompass the United Nations' multiple and ever-increasing humanitarian efforts, the UN underlined not only its hope for UNV's future "relevance for development" but also, in a larger sense, the essential, bottom-line practicality of its usefulness, whether high-tech or low.

Logical and inevitable as this now sounds, not one of us "early"- and probably "later"-UNV Coordinators found it easy. Each one of us confronted challenges that at the time seemed daunting if not overwhelming. But in a quirky reflection of Newtonian physics, as we spoke to deaf ears, knocked on close doors, and outmaneuvered stubborn preconceptions, we pulled governments, organizations, and at times our own UN system, into the real world of the unquenchable volunteer spirit.

Looking back, time telescopes, and the progress seems smooth if not foreordained. From launch and establishment, through articulation of philosophy, and fine-tuning of operating mechanisms, each of us played a part in the long, uphill road of fulfilling the goals of the programme: making more available to developing countries the technical personnel they need at the operational level, and giving international volunteer support to the fight against hard-core rural poverty.

As understanding and recognition grew, the numbers of volunteers increased, and the term "cost-effective" took on new meaning. Each success brought new challenges but also new avenues for the volunteer approach.

Now here we are in 2001-30 years since a gleam in the General Assembly's eye resulted in volunteerism's first international mandate. Since that first small group of international UN Volunteers made Yemen their new home. Since a tiny core of dedicated staff began to channel and support, at the international level, one of humankind's best and perhaps most defining impulses: to contribute oneself and one's abilities for others.

Today, each of us involved in this endeavour can be proud of the programme's achievements. After 30 years of excitement, commitment, and progress, each of us can look only at UNV but also at ourselves and say, "Congratulations on a job well done."