When Kei Tanaka arrived at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) field office in Uganda as an Associate Livelihood and Economic Inclusion Officer, there was no confirmed budget for livelihood activities. Her task was clear: expand economic opportunities for refugees and host communities.
“I proactively engaged external stakeholders, including the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and private sector partners, to explore collaboration,”
The United Nations General Assembly declared 2026 the International Volunteer Year—setting the stage for a global celebration of volunteers.
As we approach 2030, the global community is at a critical juncture in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While progress on many Sustainable Development Goals has been uneven, a powerful "means of implementation" is often hiding in plain sight: volunteerism. According to the 2026 State of the World's Volunteerism Report (SWVR), an estimated 2.1 billion people—34.5 percent of the global working-age population—volunteer every single month.
That is not only a statistic to admire. It is a development asset of extraordinary scale. Yet for too long, volunteerism has been treated as a backdrop to national development, invisible in plans, budgets, and policies. My team at UNV has spent last four years working to change that.
We have provided technical support to governments across Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Arab States, and Europe to formally embed volunteerism into their national plans and sectoral strategies.
Economics is often understood as a science about money. Because of that, it may seem far removed from volunteering. But that is a misunderstanding. At its core, economics is about how individuals, organisations, communities, and societies use limited resources to meet relatively unlimited wants and needs. In that sense, volunteering is not outside economics at all. Every day, volunteers help meet needs that would otherwise remain unmet, whether in local communities or across the world.
This is also why economics can offer useful language for thinking about volunteering.
One example is the idea of potential output: the highest level of output that can be sustained over time. In standard economics, this is usually discussed at the level of whole economies. But the basic intuition is broader. Societies can increase what they are able to sustain over time, either by increasing the resources available to them, including human labour, or by using existing resources more effectively.
Mayor Guido Déus highlighted Bonn’s long-standing connection to the United Nations and the importance of making this presence visible to the public: “Bonn has been closely linked with the United Nations for many years and has developed into an important centre for sustainability and international cooperation. The UN Campus, more than any other place in Bonn, represents the transformation from the former capital to an international city of sustainability.
Volunteerism is not a transaction of time or skill. It is a long-term investment in relationships — in the social fabric that nurtures the spirit of ubuntu within communities, where giving and receiving come together to build trust, shared humanity, and collective empowerment. This understanding is particularly important in a world shaped by overlapping crises — protracted conflict, climate-related disasters, public health challenges, and deepening social divisions. Across these contexts, the capacity of people to trust one another and act collectively is under increasing strain, even as it becomes more essential.
Too often, however, volunteerism is still framed in narrower terms — as an exchange of time, skills, or resources from those who have to those who do not. This framing aligns neatly with conventional development metrics and reporting systems, but it misses something fundamental. At its core, volunteerism is relational. It reflects how individuals and communities remain connected to one another, particularly in moments of uncertainty and disruption.
