by Sonia Josserand-Mercier

09 September 1998

Bonn, Germany: The World Wide Web has opened countless new windows to information and exchange. The United Nations Volunteers programme has greatly benefited from this opportunity to spread knowledge, share ideas and raise awareness on a global scale.

UNV started its first Home Page in 1994. Since then, a steady increase in the number of visits has confirmed the relevance of UNV's online presence and asserted the worldwide interest in volunteer activity for development. In 1997, the UNV Web Site started to grow exponentially and so did the average number of hits per month: they went from 51,000 in January 1997, to an average figure of 109,000 in May of the same year, up to 160,000 one year later. Many sites provide links to the UNV Home Page which is by now firmly established on the Internet.

The UNV Home Page opens with a "front page article" acting as a showcase for current events or online additions. The front page also offers gateways to information on recruitment, activities, thematic areas, strategy and policy documents as well as an online version of the UNVNews magazine.

Documents are added and updated on a regular basis throughout the site. Soon, the UNV Home Page will start offering information organised by geographical areas to meet our visitor's requirements. This will represent a valuable addition to the UNV Web Pages in various programme countries which are also accessible through the UNV Home Page. Another very much appreciated feature of the UNV Website is its Search facility. It is widely used by our visitors for the retrieval of UNV online information. In the forthcoming months, the large amount of documents will be slightly re-organised and the site itself will offer a new design to make navigation even easier.

Another Home Page which UNV is building up right now will be dedicated to the International Year of Volunteers 2001 (IYV). Informing about IYV objectives, the progress of preparations and planned activities, it will provide a networking tool for organisations and individual persons who support the Year. The UNV Home page also welcomes general questions and comments. They can be sent via email to webmaster@unv.org who dispatches requests and comments in-house.