The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) remain the overarching foundation defining UNV’s mission of supporting sustainable human development through volunteerism, including mobilization of volunteers.

UNV’s areas distinctive contributions to development effectiveness are:
1) Access to opportunities, services and delivery of services
2) Inclusion and participation
3) Community mobilization through voluntary action

At the heart of UNV’s approach is the conviction that voluntary action by millions of people in developing countries and elsewhere, is a vastly under recognized and under-utilised resource that needs to be strategically engaged if the MDGs are to be attained.

UNV is increasingly engaged in ensuring that volunteerism in its various forms - mutual aid and self-help, philanthropy and service, advocacy and campaigning - is an activator of the key drivers of development effectiveness as identified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), namely:

• building national capacities,
• promoting national ownership,
• advocating and fostering an enabling environment,
• seeking South-South solutions,
• promoting gender equity, and
• forging strategic partnerships.

By tapping into, and building up, a country’s stock of knowledge, social entrepreneurship, and solidarity, volunteerism helps to develop capacities, which are sustainable. It also strengthens values based on collaboration and partnership. Such capacities and values will be important determinants of the extent to which the MDGs are achieved.

Against this background, UNV’s business model has been developed around the following three areas of intervention:
(i) Advocating for volunteerism and development globally;
(ii) Integrating volunteerism in development planning; and
(iii) Mobilizing volunteers for peace and development.