Thank you to Rob Jackson from the United Kingdom for contributing today's blog post for International Volunteers Day.Each year, the 5th December is the United Nations International Volunteers Day. Actually, to give it it’s full title it is UN International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development.
Some, like my friend and colleague Jayne Cravens, find this distinction from other forms of volunteering important whilst others use the day as an opportunity to celebrate all volunteering. As Jayne’s blog suggests (follow the link above to read it) it all depends on how you interpret the name of ‘the day’.
This year ‘the day’ falls at the end of the UN’s celebration of ten years since the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10) and at the end of the European Year of Volunteering 2011 (EYV11). Both of these international years have been opportunities to celebrate the work of volunteers, to understand volunteering a little bit more and to promote its importance to society, whether nationally or internationally.
Back in 2005 the UK also had its own Year of the Volunteer. The announcement in 2004’s budget speech by then Chancellor (and later Prime Minister) Gordon Brown MP came as a total surprise to his officials and fellow MPs and Ministers but it gave yet another chance to showcase volunteering. Perhaps that’s why the year had little impact on volunteering.
In the UK levels of formal volunteering (that is volunteering done with/through an organisation) have, according to government figures, remained pretty constant for the last decade. We entered 2011 with about the same number of people doing formal volunteering as ten years ago, despite millions of pounds of investment by government.
More recently interest in volunteering shot up, mostly as a result of the financial crisis, but the numbers of people actually doing formal volunteering haven’t changed. That suggests to me that there is a mismatch between what people want from volunteering and what many organisations offer volunteers.
In the same ten year period, recent data from NCVO and Skills Third Sector shows that the number of paid staff in the voluntary and community sector in England rose by 40%. That’s a staggering amount of growth, not only in numbers of staff but cost to the donor. Personally I think it implies a worrying disregard by many organisations for volunteering as a way to effect social and economic change.
So if recent data implies that all these international days and years aren’t effecting much significant change, where can we look for the power of volunteering?
As well as IYV+10 and EYV11, this year’s UN volunteer day falls at the end of a year in which I think we’ve seen more change globally than in any year since the Berlin Wall came down. We’ve had the Arab spring and Occupy Wall St (and other places) protests, to mention just two high profile examples. Both of these, and many others too, have been powered by volunteers, people “doing more than they have to - because they want to - in a cause they consider good” (to quote the late great Ivan Scheier).
Such revolutionary endeavour to effect change invariably starts with volunteers. It starts with people who are passionate about a cause and have a strong desire to see things change. It doesn’t start with paid staff, with a requirement for funding before we take action or as a result of government support.
So on this year’s UN International Volunteer Day, whether you want to focus on volunteering for economic and social development or on some other form of volunteering, the important thing is that we celebrate and promote volunteering. Volunteering that has the power to change the world. God knows we need some change for the better.
