So many names - so little space. The story of UNV's early years is the story of a large number of hardworking people who devoted themselves to making the programme a reality, often against severe odds. Any retelling of the history will unfortunately skip over the contributions of many people whose work deserves mention. The most credit goes to the early volunteers who did so much to change the image of volunteers in the UN. There are always a few who come immediately to mind-the Ghanaian volunteer working in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, the Malawian volunteer teaching auto mechanics in Zambia, the two Norwegians living in roundavels in the mountains of Lesotho, the Philippino working in agriculture in Yemen-it would be unfair to single any out by name. They lived under very difficult conditions, often marginalized by other UN staff, and without the benefits and support available to UNVs today. Yet their hard work and devotion changed the attitude of the doubters in UNDP and the UN agencies.
The early UNV staff also had a difficult time. UNV started life with several strikes against it. At the time, the UN system was not particularly open to the use of volunteers. To complicate matters, UNV's mandate did not allow UNV to do its own recruiting; this was assigned to two NGOs, each of which had its own agenda. UNV did not even have a budget for funding volunteer travel - volunteers from industrialized countries had their recruitment and travel costs paid for by their home countries, while volunteers from developing countries had to be financed from a Special Voluntary Fund. This situation was almost impossible. Several industrialized countries refused to cooperate - supporting UNV would have required them to cut into their already slim budgets and to provide UNV with some of their most highly qualified candidates. In addition, the Special Voluntary Fund was based on contributions, which required a lot of work to raise. UNV also had to tread gingerly - every volunteer service had its own idea of what international volunteerism was about.
It was this situation that met Assad K. Sadry, the first UNV Coordinator in 1971. Despite these problems, Mr. Sadry and his deputy, Peter Molt, recruited a staff, negotiated requests from a number of countries, set up procedures, and set up the UNV office in Geneva. By the end of his first year UNV had placed 41 UN Volunteers in five countries, a remarkable achievement. By the end of 1973 there were more than 160 UN Volunteers in service. Assad Sadry is committed to the ideals of volunteerism, and I know that this was a period of his career upon which he looks back to this day with love. His love is also tinged with regret that those governing and running the UN did not always have the same commitment to these ideals, ideals which he believes are the essence of the UN Charter itself and which he sees as only just now being recovered, thanks to the more conducive public attitudes of today. He is convinced that the goal of peace and security for all cannot be achieved without resources. He never let the many problems get him down, keeping in mind one of his favourite sayings from Confucius, "Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising every time we fell".
I took over the programme at the beginning of 1974. Virtually the first thing I was told by the existing staff was that the programme would not be viable if the whole recruitment process could not be regularized. My first task was to try to get the mandate changed. I was lucky to inherit staff like Ed White and Anna de Toni who had a thorough understanding of what had to be done and to get strong support from Bert Lindstrom, then Deputy Administrator of UNDP. I was also fortunate to be able to recruit Elias Cacouris and Sean Finn who had many years of UN experience and even more important, had credibility in the UN system, as well as younger staff like Sam Nyambi and Tim Howick-Smith.
With the help of many people like Andrew Joseph (then at FAO), Bruce Stedman of UNDP (who taught me about lobbying delegations and who helped draft several of the Governing Council resolutions) and support from some of the organizations responsible for national volunteers, most noticeably the Dutch, the Irish and the Japanese, it was possible over the course of a few years to get the UNV mandate changed, allowing UNV to recruit its own volunteers and in June 1977 permitting volunteers' travel and other costs to be charged to UNDP regular programme funds (IPF). This was an important step in setting the stage for UNV's future growth. By then the number of UNVs in the field had grown to only 280.
When UNV took over its own recruitment it was also fortunate to be able to attract Helmut Weyers, the prime mover for support of Domestic Development Services (local volunteerism) through the UN. At the same time, UNV received the mandate to support domestic volunteer services. Another small, but significant achievement was the launching of the UNV newsletter (in three languages) - a much less professional journal than the one you are reading today.
I left in July 1977, leaving a competent and devoted staff, with the hopes that the administrative changes achieved would make life somewhat easier for my successors.