15 March 1999

BONN: Volunteers are young, in their teens or twenties - so says the man in the street. He's wrong. The average age of volunteers assigned abroad by the main bilateral programmes is well up in the thirties: today's UN Volunteers average 39. Nearly a third of all UNVs are in their forties, a tenth in their fifties or sixties; a handful even in their seventies. For four decades the bodies which field volunteers internationally have adapted their recruitment to demand, to the evolving needs of the South. As developing countries bring their own qualifying professionals on stream, so what is asked of candidates for expatriate volunteer service becomes steeper and steeper. You could go from Britain as an 18 year-old school leaver in the late 1950s. You needed a general bachelor's degree in the 1960s, a science- or technology-based one and some working experience in the 1970s, yet more experience in the 1980s. Now, wherever you come from, it's frequently a Master's and ten years in your profession, with a demonstrated commitment to development work. What next?

The trend poses dilemmas. It's not easy to recruit people in mid-career. Forty year-olds everywhere, men and women, tend to be settled in jobs or have family commitments. So, industrialised country sending bodies have been agonising whether or not to allow younger people to demonstrate their commitment by assigning them as "associate volunteers". They've worried that that could be to sacrifice their long-held conviction that demand is paramount, and not supply. Some have gone ahead despite and launched such schemes. Should UNV follow suit?

While talking of age, we might remember that 1999 is the International Year of Older Persons. As with any age-group, the older have needs: but they also have great potential. Fit and open-minded early retireds and pensioners have much to offer as volunteers themselves. They've been around most of the corners in a lifetime's work, and, if an assignment doesn't run perfectly, it's no great skin off their nose in career terms. They have the maturity to cope with sensitive electoral, conflict resolution and human rights work. They are freer to undertake a series of missions to the same project over time, as volunteer advisors or consultants. So, perhaps more of them, too? Increasing numbers of people in the North seek constructive things to do in their later years. In the South, the young seek in great numbers to play a real part in their nations' development. Can we reconcile those two situations? It's but one of many topics for discussion in IYV 2001: that maybe, just as adults of all ages have something useful to contribute as volunteers within their own societies, so it should be internationally, across frontiers.

By the way, the Editor admits to a personal interest: he is drafting this, his last of ten years of UNVNews Editorials, on the eve of retirement, but hopes to keep the volunteer faith for a few years yet!