20 August 2004

Barcelona, Spain: The volunteer movement has a critical role to play in harnessing and channeling volunteer energy towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Ad de Raad, Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme told conference attendees in Spain.

Speaking at a special forum of the 18th World Volunteer Conference promoted by the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE), Mr. de Raad urged governments to seize volunteerism’s potential in helping to realize their commitments to the MDGs.

“It is now time for governments to act on United Nations General Assembly resolutions they have adopted, which state that volunteerism can be a valuable resource for achieving development goals,” he says. “Ignoring volunteerism, failing to promote it, failing to strengthen it, failing to assess how it can be leveraged, failing to use it strategically to help meet development targets, amounts to squandering this resource.”

While volunteerism, he added, is not the solution to all of the challenges facing humanity, disregarding its impact would be moving in the wrong direction. “Volunteering is of course not a solution for addressing all of the world’s ills. But to ignore the contributions that many millions volunteers make, and not to factor volunteerism into official policy and programmes, is a fundamental mistake,” he said.

Mr. de Raad joined Liz Burns, President of IAVE, and David Kalete, Programmes Director with CIVICUS, to share his insight on the forum’s theme of Volunteer work, a key actor for a sustainable community. Together, the three panelists discussed the importance of furthering volunteerism for development and recognizing its contribution to the development movement. Examples of past successful interventions through the mobilization of volunteers were given such as the 10 million volunteers involved in the 2001 campaign to vaccinate 550 million children against polio. The panelists also shared their views on ways to improve the actions and involvement of citizens, governments and the private sector in fostering sustainable communities.

As part of the Universal Forum of Cultures – Barcelona 2004, the five-day World Volunteer Conference, which started on 17 August, examined the nature of volunteer commitments in the defense of values such as justice and human rights. Sessions and discussions were also held on a wide range of topics related to the involvement of volunteers, from eradicating poverty to promoting peace, and safeguarding the environment to building corporate volunteerism.