Volunteering is not a footnote—It belongs in the Plan

Author

  • Narendra Mishra
    Narendra Mishra Policy Specialist UNV
print pdf
Low quality, print optimized High quality, color print

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. 

Volunteering through an Economic Lens: From Measurement to Meaning

Author

  • Jakub Dostál
    Jakub Dostál Economist, College of Polytechnics Jihlava
print pdf
Low quality, print optimized High quality, color print

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.

Inside the UN: Guided Campus Tours in Bonn

UN Campus in Bonn Opens Its Doors
print pdf
Low quality, print optimized High quality, color print

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.

Bound Together: Ubuntu and Volunteerism

Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, UN Resident Coordinator in Angola
print pdf
Low quality, print optimized High quality, color print

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.

Global webinar calls for a sharper look at the value of volunteerism

print pdf
Low quality, print optimized High quality, color print

Why Evidence matters for Volunteerism

Opening the session, Emiliya Asadova, UNV Team Lead for Evidence, stressed the need for stronger and more inclusive data on volunteerism. Without solid evidence, the work of volunteers risks remaining invisible in national policies and development planning—valued in practice, but absent on paper.

What does faster technology mean for how UNV works every day?

Albert Hasani, Information Technology Analyst at UNV
print pdf
Low quality, print optimized High quality, color print

At first glance, it’s just cables—hundreds of them, tangled and hidden from view. But these wires carry the work of an entire organization. Every email sent, system accessed, and meeting joined depends on what runs quietly through them. Such is the information and communication technology backbone of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV), a network built for today—and tomorrow.

UNV has taken a major step forward in strengthening the digital foundations that support its global work. Building on earlier progress in moving systems to the cloud, the organization has now modernized the core network infrastructure that connects staff, offices, and services—often unseen, but essential to daily operations. 

At the United Nations Campus in Bonn, this meant replacing over 300 network switches, many of which had been in use since 2006. The upgrade has given network speeds up to ten times faster across all UNV-supported offices and workspaces. 

Subscribe to