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Millennium Development Goals

Mozambique-Brazil Youth Exchange © Melisa Dickie / International Women's Health Coalition

Can the modest endeavour of an individual volunteer register any meaningful difference to a global project such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? Most certainly, said former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his 2005 report to the General Assembly about volunteering: “it is barely conceivable that the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved without the efforts, creativity and solidarity of many millions of ordinary citizens through voluntary action”. This report followed the first UN International Conference on Volunteerism and Millennium Development Goals held in Pakistan in December 2004.

The report also appealed for moves towards a new profile of global volunteering in the context of the MDGs; in particular that traditions of active help for the disadvantaged should pass from north to south, especially to young people who comprise the bulk of national populations in the developing world. The NGO community too is keen for volunteering to evolve; it encourages the concept of active global citizenship, active not just in helping others directly but also in campaigning against unfair practices in global economics and other root causes of poverty and injustice which fundamentally constrain progress in poor countries towards the MDGs.

In the event there was no reference to the role of volunteering in the headline recommendations of the Millennium Project report on how to achieve the MDGs, nor in the eventual Outcome document approved by the World Summit in September 2005. The omission was strangely at odds with an earlier General Assembly resolution which, buoyed by the success of International Year of the Volunteer in 2001, called on members "to support volunteerism as a strategic tool to enhance economic and social development". Whilst volunteering in most parts of the world has subsequently mushroomed, it is unlikely that a drive to achieve the MDGs is the dominant motivation.
Volunteering at Home

Clean-up volunteers in South Africa © Gideon Mendel/Network / allAfrica.com

Many countries are striving to create enabling environments for volunteering to flourish. In developed countries, this typically involves amendments to employment legislation, establishment of national volunteering councils, public exhortation by politicians, and training for volunteer managers. For example, volunteering features increasingly in proposals for European legislation.

Richer countries are no strangers to the role of volunteering in social development. In Europe and North America the culture has become embedded to the extent that local community organizations are widely recognized for their contribution to social cohesion, papering over the cracks in national welfare programmes.

Such traditions emerged from 19th century extremes of wealth and poverty not entirely dissimilar to conditions in the developing world today. Many poor countries themselves possess cultural norms for community support, but these often lack the institutional framework to cope with new challenges posed by the 21st century, such as the explosion of population occurring in large cities. Other countries encounter reluctance to engage in volunteering at national level. For example, those emerging from periods of strong central state control face difficulty in creating a new culture of voluntary community service. The same is true for very poor countries where all household efforts are so often dedicated to survival or where unemployment is exceptionally high.

Polio vaccine given to a child © United Nations Children's Fund

Nevertheless, the spirit of volunteering is spreading fast in the developing world, especially amongst young people. There have been some remarkable achievements, the most spectacular involving delivery of vaccination programmes to very large numbers of people. Natural disasters such as the Pakistan earthquake have also provoked unprecedented local support and the tragedy in Iraq has unleashed moving accounts of a traumatized people mobilizing to support each other.
Volunteering Abroad

Habitat Volunteer © Habitat for Humanity International

Another tradition with its origins in wealthy countries is volunteering overseas, the ultimate experience of non-financial altruism. It offers rewards which go beyond the fulfilment of helping disadvantaged people. The best known traditional agencies offering overseas opportunities are VSO in the UK and Peace Corps in the US. Ironically, the highly professional assignments offered by such organisations are the only branch of volunteering which is not currently enjoying a period of exponential growth. Career prospects and mortgage repayments are vulnerable to the standard two year absence on local pay scales typically demanded. The time-driven modern professional seeks to obtain assignments of ever decreasing periods of commitment.

This demand for fast-track overseas volunteering experiences has in its most extreme form created a new branch of the travel business known as “voluntourism” which arranges visits to developing countries for just a few weeks of engagement on a “project” together with the experience of living within a poor village environment. The “volunteers” typically pay the full costs of the expedition. “Gap-year” students are a core market for these packages with shorter term versions available for “vacation volunteering”. There is great variation in these schemes; some offer sophisticated flexibility, whilst others reduce the volunteering component to the equivalent of an excursion and there is a distinct whiff of creeping commercialization.

It is no wonder that development professionals, wary from painful experience of the complexity of delivering successful development projects, fear that voluntourism is turning back the clock to a paternalist colonial era. VSO’s interesting Global XChange programme pairs volunteers from richer and poorer countries in a fully reciprocal package where they visit each other’s homes for similar periods, the focus being on the concept of global citizenship rather than any notion of assisting poor communities.

A more positive development than voluntourism is the adoption of the concept of international volunteering by the emerging middle classes in developing countries, leading to south-south assignments. This is particularly strong in India with its burgeoning numbers of medical, information technology and business professionals who are more than capable of delivering the capacity building potential of the best overseas assignments.
Online Volunteering

© Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep

Computers and the Internet have enabled a new breed of development workers and activists to emerge. The expertise of online volunteers is bridging gaps between communities and cultures in ways that were impossible even five years ago and which overcome many of the shortcomings of traditional overseas volunteering. Many online volunteers are themselves young educated people in developing countries, increasingly connected, skilled, and passionate to contribute to the desperate needs of the global village.

There are countless examples of new technologies working for the benefit of poor countries through the medium of online volunteering. The construction of a website for an NGO in the developing world, translation services, and marketing and fundraising support are examples of quintessential online volunteering, offering real scope for the well-connected to address the digital divide. People With Disabilities Uganda (PWDU) is a peace and disability rights organization which utilizes no fewer than 150 online volunteers from around the world. OneWorld Guides themselves constitute a virtual product, with over 75 global contributors online; much the same is true of SAWNET, a South Asian Women’s Network which has no formal legal or physical presence.

The tendency of politicians and corporations to leverage strength through establishing regional and global groupings can now be mirrored by activists working together online. Such networks are cheap to establish and their potential represents a fascinating antidote to globalization.
Corporate Volunteering

The spirit of volunteering is a natural target for those major corporations which profess commitment to the world of corporate social responsibility. Companies encourage employees to volunteer for social projects, typically conceding normal company time for the purpose. The company becomes an extra link in the chain of beneficiaries of conventional volunteering, improving its image in the local or wider community, and motivating existing and prospective employees. Partly for this reason, the great majority of corporate schemes focus on local community work rather than problems in developing countries.

Some civil society organisations pause for thought before participating in corporate or "employee" volunteering schemes. These vary considerably in detail and it is not always clear whether the employees are volunteering in the true sense of giving personal time, or whether it is the company that is donating its time for motives which may include “teamwork” and enhanced personal development. However, such programmes can deliver valuable services and corporate volunteering shows every sign of extending to companies based in the developing world.
The Limits to Volunteering

The ambiguities inherent in corporate volunteering and voluntourism are examples of how the fashionable “correctness” of volunteering is creating hybrid commercial arrangements which push against its traditional boundaries. Politicians too are sailing in uncharted waters; for example, there are proposals in some countries that young people should engage in a period of community service as a national obligation. This triggers a fundamental contradiction between the concepts of volunteering and conscription.

Economists have suggested that volunteering should be integrated into national budgets so that the contribution of all human labour is properly recognized. Such ideas tend to stumble over the difficulty of measuring the economic value of volunteer effort but there are philosophical limits as well. If the voice of top-down encouragement to volunteer becomes too strong, or if the execution of an assignment encounters the realms of cost/benefit analysis, then the essence of volunteering as a spontaneous non-monetary gesture may be at risk.



This Guide has been compiled primarily by reference to the OneWorld archive of volunteering articles and to an earlier version of the OneWorld Volunteering Guide first published in 2003 with material provided by Volunteer Editors Vedabhyas Kundu in New Delhi and Bill Gunyon, Editor of OneWorld Guides.

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