Info
The year 2001 has been declared the International Year of Volunteers (IYV) by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 20th of November 1997 (resolution A/RES/52/17). For this occasion, a number of international organisations, the "Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service (CCIVS)", the "Association of Voluntary Service Organisations (AVSO)", the "Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations (Alliance)", "International Christian Youth Exchange" (ICYE), the "Service Civil International (SCI)", and "Youth Action for Peace (YAP)" have decided to organise a one year Joint Campaign.
The "UNESCO Youth Coordination Unit (UCJ)" and the "United Nations Volunteers (UNV)" support this joint initiative.
|
The campaign aims to highlight the concept of voluntary service, in all its various guises and to facilitate thematic debates throughout the entire year. Actions and debates are organised around the topics presented in this brochure. The targets are public and private institutions and organisations, local governments and municipalities new to voluntary service, and those already active in the domain. The campaign seeks to raise awareness among the millions of active and potentially active volunteers about the voluntary service movement. |
The IYV Joint Campaign was launched on the 5th of December at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, with the support of the UNESCO Youth Coordination Unit. It will be concluded in Madrid, Spain, in January 2002 with a symposium, which will summarise the debates and draw conclusions from the wide-ranging discussions and activities carried out during the Campaign. The symposium aims at complementing the various events linked to the International Year of Volunteers through a thorough self-critical and creative reflection on the types of voluntary service proposed by the international youth NGOs involved.
An Action Week, from the 6th to the 12th of August, gives the opportunity to volunteers and voluntary service organisations themselves to participate in several activities: distribution of symbolic volunteer visas about the necessity of a legal status for volunteers and collection of stories about volunteers' visa 'adventures' for a blackbook of visa refusal during the IYV 2001; a "human chain" made of volunteers, symbolising that they are part of a global movement of voluntary service promoting mutual understanding and peace, and debates related to the topics described in the following pages.
The Joint Campaign wishes to engage as many people and organisations as possible in the discussions on voluntary service. For this reason we hope to promote our thematic debates at a number of seminars and conferences organised by our members and partners around the world during IYV 2001
The recommendations resulting from the campaign shall be submitted to the UNV as a contribution to the final results of the overall IYV presented at the UN GA 2002.
Apart from being an opportunity to raise awareness on voluntary service and to address particularly topical issues, this Joint Campaign also represents a chance to reflect internally on the past, present and future direction of our work and define possible partnerships with intergovernmental institutions. We not only want to show the world how great volunteering is, but also to ask ourselves some critical questions after almost 80 years of existence of our movement. For example, how can voluntary service balance the personal benefit and training interests of the volunteer with the service aspect for the community? As a matter of fact, this last question which inspired the title for the launching event on International Volunteer Day on December 5th 2000.
[Home] [Info] [How to get involved] [Organisations involved] [Topics] [Downloads] [Feedback A.W.] [Symposium]