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Call for 'Stories of Volunteer Action'
26 January 2008
by CIVICUS, IAVE and UNV

The World Alliance for Citizen Participation in conjunction with its partner organizations the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) and the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) Programe invites interested CIVICUS members, partners, and other civil society organizations and businesses actively engaged in corporate social responsibility to submit short 'stories of volunteer action' for possible inclusion in a joint CIVICUS-IAVE-UNV publication on the indispensable role of volunteering and activism for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The CIVICUS-IAVE-UNV joint publication seeks to advance a broad notion of volunteerism, which moves away from a perception of volunteering as strictly charity, service delivery and philanthropy, to one that also encompasses aspects of social activism such as advocacy, civic engagement, awareness raising and campaigning. Toward this end, the commonalities and synergies between volunteering and social activism will be considered according to a range of perspectives and practical examples from civil society organizations and leaders. The publication also aims to highlight examples of the indispensable and oftentimes under-recognized role of volunteer action for helping to realize widely held development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Story Focus and Theme
CIVICUS is seeking inspiring and effective 'stories of volunteer action' from all regions of the world to help illustrate the relationship between volunteering and social activism for promoting development and social change. Descriptions of 'volunteer action' must clearly explain the role of volunteers as agents of social change through involvement in advocacy efforts, civic engagement/participation, campaigning and/or awareness building. This may include lobbying for changes in policy and the law, raising awareness about the needs of a community, human rights or poverty, engaging in the development process, advocating for the rights of the elderly, efforts to ensure government accountability, inter-cultural learning, and empowerment through increased access to information and skills. Examples of 'volunteer action' can be formal (i.e. linked to a particular organization/institution) however exceptional examples of informal 'volunteer action' whether by a group or an individual are also encouraged. The partner organizations are particularly keen to receive stories from the national and local levels where individuals are coming together around shared goals and taking their destinies into their own hands.

Possible topics for stories include: Youth - Social Inclusion - Good Governance/Anti-Corruption - Gender Equality/Empowerment - Poverty Reduction - Participatory Development - Health and Disease - Education - Environment - Human Rights – ICTs – Peace Building/Inter-cultural Learning.

The Application Process
Descriptions of 'volunteer action' should be no longer then 350 words and must be submitted by Friday, February 8th. Where possible, please include quotes from volunteers and/or heads of organisations about the relationship between volunteering and social activism to further enhance the description of the 'volunteer action.' Also, if available, please send one picture that best illustrates the example of 'volunteer action' which you are submitting.

Please also provide the following contact information:

* Contact Name
* Organization/Institution
* Short description of your organization's work
* Full Address
* Email
* Phone
* Fax
* Current membership status (i.e. whether your organization is currently a member)

Acehnese women rebuild their lives one step at a time.

The sweet taste of life

Ibu Kadija is 75 years young – and her smile hasn't aged a bit. Her married children have offered to support her in old age but, she "dislikes being idle, not doing anything - and I don't like to sleep," she laughs.

So Ibu Kadija works: she harvests sea salt, along with 12 other salt farmers in her village of Lancong Baroh, Kecamatan Jeunib, in Bireun (district in Aceh). The process used, an ancient one, involves hours of drying salty sand in the sun, before filtering it, and finally boiling the mixture for eight long hours till the precious white salt crystals appear.

Kadija produces about 10 to 15 kg of salt everyday, far more than you'd expect from that frail lady who has been producing salt ever since she was... "Single", she replies with a joking sparkle in the eye.

The salt produced is sold to a market agent, who comes regularly to the village, at around Rp1000 Indonesian (11 cents) per kg. The agent sets the price; but since salt is not a quickly perishable good, the producers sometimes refuse to sell it to him. The agent then resells the salt for about Rp1500 – roughly a 50 percent profit – to retailers who, in turn, will sell it to the consumers. The end price of Kadija's salt is Rp 2500 rupiahs.

Ibu Jonah is also a salt farmer. On good days, she produces 20 kg of salt; but on bad ones, she barely extracts half. "The rainy season is the worst: for about 5 months, we are hardly able to dry the salt sand, and the rain reduces the saltiness of the water," effectively diluting the salt and virtually doubling the volume of sea water that needs to be processed to extract the same quantity of salt. So, during the rainy season, Ibu Jonnah has to rely on her savings as well as the meager assistance her married children can afford.

Both Ibu Jonnah and Ibu Kadija lost their homes in the December 2004 Tsunami. Asked who rebuilt her house, Ibu Jonnah answers: "my carpenter!" And this is true: the World Bank, through its Program for Women Headed Households in Indonesia (PEKKA) financed the reconstruction while giving the women freedom to select a contractor of their choice; the results, both in terms of quality and of finances, were excellent.

PEKKA generally focuses on village level capacity building and microfinance activities, social and economic empowerment. It also has a special programme for widows of the tsunami victims in Aceh. So after barely two months, during which they lived in emergency shelters, the tsunami victims moved in their new houses.

The PEKKA program also provided them with the necessary funds to replace the simple equipment necessary to the task, as well as the firewood.

For the following five month, the women could be seen collecting, selecting used pieces of broken wood left behind by the tsunami to rebuild their rudimentary 'salt houses'. These are simple wooden huts used to shelter the huge metal pots where the salt water is boiled all day long. Eventually, those were replaced by the International Organization of Migration.

The revenue generated remains low, however. The villagers, along with the PEKKA facilitator, have been considering ways to increase their production, since they are able to sell any amount they can produce.

With the help of PEKKA, they are exploring the possibility of automating the production process: for the salt farmers of Lancong Baroh want to acquire a machine that would greatly facilitate their task, thereby reducing the necessary effort and increasing the productivity by almost 100 percent, effectively doubling the production – and the income.

They've seen it work, too: the neighboring village owns such a machine, which directly produces the salt from the sea water and bypasses the long hours of laboring the sand.

But the results of this step remain unsure. And the salt farmers are fully aware of the limitations of their new project.

First, they are further from the sea than the neighboring village. This could be a strong disincentive if is reduces production efficiency.

Second, the salt that the machine produces is wet: it will therefore necessitate drying in the sun, which, although it is not an exhausting activity, will have to be halted during the five long rainy months.

Another way salt farmers could increase their income would be to attempt to sell directly to the end consumer, rather than to the agent. Why won't the salt farmers of the village get together and sell their product directly on the market?

"It's hard for us to get around", says Ibu Jonnah. "The agent has a motorcycle, and he can go to further markets if he is unable to sell the salt – to Bireuen, Pidie, or even Banda Aceh, but we can't. We even tried once, but we were unable to find a buyer in the market."

And here lies another ambitious project of the women's group: the creation of PEKKA markets where Kadija, Jonnah, and many other PEKKA members would be able to sell their products directly to the customers, thereby saving the profits that multiple middlemen make.

Small fish, big hopes

The village of Lancong Baroh is beautifully located where the sea and the hills meet in harmony to create a scene you'd want to admire for hours.

Yet for the women of the PEKKA group, sunrise is not just a daily miracle of nature – it's a call for work.

Thirty-women strong, the PEKKA group is a successful example of how women heads of household can claim their independence, by making a livelihood for themselves and their families, thereby gaining the respect of the entire community.

Having received literacy and basic accounting training from the PEKKA facilitators, they have succeeded in making their occupations a source of income for themselves and those around them.

Many of these women work in drying fish: the buy the small fish and dry it, thereby making it suitable for storage for a period up to three days, by which time they would have generally succeeded in selling off the whole production.

Ibu Suryani buys, on average, 10 kg of fish from the fishermen: she selects the smallest varieties, those which are better to dry. They cost her Rp 250,000 (US$27 dollars); she is able to resell them, after drying them for about Rp 280,000 to 300,000 to an agent who, after subtracting his distribution cost, will in turn make a similar net benefit when he resells it. The women know exactly how much the agent makes but since he transports the fish and finds buyers they don't complain about his "information rent."

Ibu Wati also dries small fish. She relies on the fish her two children catch. Both are fishermen, and the family owns two boats and manages those of others as well.

But, she tells us, "With the tsunami, everything came to a stop. With two boats broken and the other two lost, we were left with no source of income." Luckily enough, the boys were able to work on other people's boats; and aided by the family's savings that lasted just long enough for the international aid to arrive, the family was able to survive until their boats were replaced by an Italian NGO.

Yet just like the fish, the profit is small. So why would they confine themselves to it? Why not trade fresh, large fish, and gain more money?

"The benefits from fresh fish are far bigger," confirms Ibu Erni, "but you need some capital," fishermen sell a kg of a tuna for Rp 15,000 rupiahs and they would be able to resell it for Rp 30,000, making a far more interesting net benefit than the dry fish business.

Yet despite that, they are unable to take advantage of this opportunity: "It's too risky for us. With dry fish, we can store it up to three days, until we sell it. But the possibility of large fish going bad because we lack the storage facilities is just too much of a risk that none of us is willing to take."

"We've tried to increase our income in many ways. We even tried to avoid the agent and go to the market ourselves!"

Indeed, one time, the ladies decided to sell their product on the market themselves, thereby saving the agent's commission. Yet the excitement did not last very long: "We arrived to the market and crowded as it was, we knew no one – and no one wanted to buy from us. We had to take our fish and return to the village." They eventually sold it to the agent who visited their village the next day.

It was a bitter lesson in the rules of the market: a good product, with no market access, will simply not be sold.

So the women are resigned to marketing their goods through an intermediary, and to make do with their meagre benefit, until they find a solution to their main problems of access to markets and storage.

Kadija, the force for change

Seeing Kadija play with her son, greeting her daughter who just returned from her first day of school you almost forget she is just recovering from the immeasurable losses of war.

Kadija lost both her father and her husband to the civil war that ravaged Aceh for nearly three decades. Her husband was killed by the army in September 2003 – and they refused to release the body. Only 11 days later, her father was also killed. Her mother was also held captive, and tortured for a week.

The charge that brought this calamity to her family was feeding the rebels. She shrugs at the mention of the weak excuse. "When we see someone starving, we feed them, that's how we are. There's nothing to think about. We don't ask them about what is in their mind."

Kadija now is the head of her household consisting of her mother, her two children, as well as three brothers and sisters. She owns a small parcel of land that she started ploughing after he husband died; but she produces less and is forced to work in the afternoon in other people's rice fields, to meet her family's needs. Luckily, the owners of the rice field are honest and generous, and she gets to keep two thirds of her crop.

Two months after having lost her loved ones, Kadija and her family moved from their village. Their house was burned.

She moved to a house in the village of Blang Poroh (Jeunib), which was lent to her by friends who now live in Lhokseumawe, further down the coast. This house has been her shelter ever since.

The general attitude of her new community has been very positive. "I was worried we would be treated differently, being 'victims'. But thankfully, the community made us feel that it was... just like the old days."

Kadija told us, however, that she did not benefit from the government compensations for conflict victims ('diyat'). "The money did reach the village, but it wasn't distributed fairly: the old village chief himself decided who was or was not a conflict victim. I was not on his list", she remembers calmly. "I don't really trust the government's promises," she says. "I don't care about the government anymore". She remains sceptical of government intervention, but says she holds no hate for the army. "I don't want to carry the burden of hatred, to the government, or to GAM. I just want to get on with my life, with my children."

So she cares for her family from the sole revenue of her work. She sells her crops to an agent, an exporter – and, she tells us with a bit of pride, her fruits are exported to India.

An educated woman, Kadija studied financial management for three years in a post-high school institute.

Despite her workload, she manages to find time for community work: she actually initiated the PEKKA program in her new village. "I initially went to other widows, who were quite receptive to the idea. Then, I went to other women whom I knew could be interested." Kadija got training from the PEKKA facilitator, and she is now the leader of her village group: she teaches them basic literacy skills, as well as leadership skills and how to conduct a meeting. She also initiated the presence of women in village meetings: before her, women were not part of the 'Meunasah' meetings, and did not take part in the life of the decisions of the community. Slowly, thanks to women like her, things are changing.

Kadija has also taken the lead in helping those women increase their income: "My sister got a sewing machine, she taught herself how to use it, and now she is starting to earn money on her own. I'd like to teach the other women to sew, too. But this will need some money."

When asked about what other help the PEKKA program could provide, she said "don't stop this program!" She also mentioned that she'd like to have various training programs for her fellow PEKKA members, such basic computer literacy, typing, and accounting.

Kadija's active leadership earned her a nomination by PEKKA officials as a leading Acehnese leader, and she flew to the World Bank's office in Jakarta in March 2006 to meet Tony Blair.

"He was handsome," recalls a smiling Kadija.

No School? Built one

Badakhshan, Afghanistan: When Toshiko Kitahara arrived in Ragh district in Badakhshan province, north-east Afghanistan, two things struck her: its natural beauty and the fact that girls did not attend school.

As a UN Volunteer with the World Food Programme (WFP), Toshiko decided to make girls' education a priority. [She first arrived in Afghanistan in 2002 and started as a UN Volunteer in 2003.] A programme officer with WFP's Food for Education unit in the province, the Japanese national took up her concern directly with department of education officials – and just about anyone else who would listen.

In meetings with the department, she learned that they did not have the resources to accommodate the 700 or so girls in the district and definitely no funds to construct a school. The majority of girls who were receiving an education were doing so in classrooms at boys' schools, mosques and private homes – all scattered throughout as many as 16 different communities within the district.

With that information in hand, Toshiko started her self-driven campaign to build the first girls' school in Ragh. Her quest for funds started in Afghanistan and crossed the globe before she arrived at enough money to have the project put in motion. She rallied friends, donors and anyone she met to contribute to the project. The Japanese Embassy in Kabul donated US $80,000 and she received $65,000 from individuals, groups, companies and organizations, raising a total of $146,000. (Toshiko is still campaigning for $35,000, the amount required to pay back all construction costs, which totaled $181,000.)

An NGO based in the province implemented the project, while WFP's Food for Work programme allowed for the recruitment of locals to carry out the construction. The mosaic of support enabled the school to be finished by the end of 2005, just in time for the start of the 2006 school year.

"The last time I visited the project site, the girls, their parents and local authorities were excited to have a new girls' school for the first time in Ragh," says Toshiko. "They may not be aware of my personal commitment to the project, but to me it is not important if they know about me or not. The most important thing is that the girls have access to and receive quality education."

Nearly 90 UN Volunteers are serving in Afghanistan where they support the activities of WFP, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

Female volunteers reduce child-mother mortality in Nepal

Kathmandu, Nepal: Female community health volunteers have been contributing to stem child and maternal mortality rates in the last 10 years, said an analytical report on National Survey of Female Community Health Volunteer (FCHV) of Nepal disseminated on Monday.

Presenting the study report, Dr. Bal Krishna Subedi of Family Health Division, under the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) said that the FCHV was established in 1988 in 28 districts with one FCHV in each ward. The number of FCHVs increased to 50,000 in the later years.

The study found the median age of FCHVs being 38 years.
62 per cent are educated and 42 per cent have received primary school education. "But as for the delivery of services, there has not been much difference in the services being provided by them," said Dr. Subedi.
53 per cent of the women were found to be working for more than 10 years

About 47,000 FCHVs are working in rural areas and nearly 3,000 in municipalities. The survey shows that FCHVs are present in over 97 per cent in the rural wards of the country.

Director at the Department of Health Services (DHS) Dr. Sarala Malla said that every FCHV was provided 18-days basic primary health care training and a refresher training is organised every five year. Radio is an important secondary source of information.

Launching the report, Secretary at the MoHP Ram Chandra Man Singh said the works done by FCHV were exemplary. Maternal mortality has been reduced to 281 per 100,000.

He said that the Ministry would work in promoting their potentials and the government is serious about the improvement in health sector.

FCHV Bhubaneshwori Dhakal said that they were happy to work as volunteers at the community level. She said that they were facing different difficulties but were coping with them. She called on the government to provide identity to the volunteers wherever they might to choose to work inside Nepal.

Currently, 28 districts have a population-based programme. If this model were to be expanded to all districts, it will require 12,000 additional FCHVs.

Taliban prevents volunteers, health workers to vaccinate children

Tarinkot, Afghanistan: Gulalai, 45, has always viewed the health of her children as a top priority and is not afraid to speak up about it. "It's been two years and still no one has come to vaccinate my children against polio," the mother-of-five told IRIN.

But living in the heartland of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province - where a growing anti-government insurgency has made vaccinations all but impossible - Gulalai has no illusions as to why.

"The vaccinators don't feel safe. They won't come and our children will suffer," she said from the town of Madabot, a dust-ridden community of 15,000 people just 15km from the provincial capital of Tarinkot.

Four other women in the area that IRIN interviewed echoed her view.

"People say the children in Tarinkot have been vaccinated, but unfortunately our children haven't," Moahboba, 28, said from the doorway of her simple mud brick home in Dorafshan, 20km northwest of Tarinkot. "The vaccinators do not come here because the security situation doesn't allow it."

Polio is a debilitating disease that mainly strikes children.

For polio vaccinators working on the frontlines of an emerging Taliban resurgence and earning just US $50 per month, the 15 or 20km trip from the provincial capital to outlying towns and villages is too much of a risk to take.

"While I was traveling to Tarinkot, the Taliban stopped my bus and forced me outside," said Hamdullah, a government polio vaccinator who was beaten and harassed on 16 February while on duty.

"They slapped my face. They held me for eight hours before releasing me," the 35-year-old said. "They made me promise that I would not vaccinate any more children – threatening to kill me if I did."

Aid workers threatened

The Taliban have long eyed aid workers with suspicion, suspecting them to be collaborating with Western military forces. Aid workers have repeatedly been warned and threatened to leave the country or face the consequences. "If they won't stop their work, we will target them, like we've targeted them in the past," said Qari Yousef Ahmadi, purportedly a Taliban spokesman, to the Associated Press late last year.

Threats of violence are having a serious impact on Afghanistan's overall polio eradication efforts.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Afghanistan had a severe polio outbreak in 2006, largely because of conflict in the south severely impeding access to children during immunisation rounds.

Health specialists agree that eradicating the polio virus is no longer a technical issue only. Polio eradication hinges on vaccine supply, the outlook of the local community, funding and, most of all, support from political leaders at all levels.

While the first three points are essentially in place in Afghanistan, getting support from political leaders will prove key to the success of a polio eradication campaign, specialists say.

Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Nigeria are the four countries worldwide where polio remains endemic, according to the WHO.

Impact of insecurity

Specialists say the transmission of the virus continues to take place in areas where insecurity is high as large immunity gaps among young children exist.

To control outbreaks and interrupt transmission, vaccinators need to reach all children everywhere through high-quality vaccination campaigns, with a particular focus on children in border areas and in mobile populations.

Of the 31 confirmed cases of polio in Afghanistan in 2006, 29 occurred in rural areas of the south – designated by UN security officials as "very high risk areas".

The WHO estimates that in 2006 alone, vaccinators were unable to access an estimated 125,000 children in the south and south-eastern regions of the country due to insecurity.

Of this number, about 75,000 were in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Nimruz, and 50,000 in the south-eastern provinces of Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Ghazni.

"Security is the primary challenge we face in successfully eradicating polio from Afghanistan today," Dr Tahir Pervaiz Mir, head of WHO's polio eradication drive in Afghanistan, told IRIN in Kabul.

Each year, WHO, in collaboration with the UN children's agency, UNICEF, and the Afghan health ministry, initiates four national immunisation drives (NIDs) and has additional sub-national immunisation drives in the areas deemed to be at particularly high risk.

Supplementary rounds generally carried out in January and February annually in the south – 10 in 2006 alone - have proven especially difficult for vaccinators. "During the February vaccination rounds, our teams were not able to access around 100,000 children in the southern region because of insecurity," Mir noted.

Echoing Mir's concern on the impact insecurity was having, Saifudin Khan, a health officer for Urozgan's provincial health department, said, "We have not been able to carry out any vaccinations in areas like Dorafshan, Madabot and Charmestan because of the security situation. When any of our volunteers go to these areas, the Taliban destroy their tools and threaten to kill them."

Fighting Aids & launching volunteer research in India
by Kinuko Mitani

New Delhi, India: For World AIDS Day, 1 December, the UNV India country office team (COT) and UNV Volunteers based in Delhi are participating as volunteers in assisting the event on 2 December.

Three-day ShARE World Seminar, from 2-4 December: The seminar focuses on 'China-India: challenges of one billion population country' in Delhi. The UNV COT has arranged a representative from the Planning Commission, government of India to speak about the current status of the voluntary sector in India.

Another session will be held with students from different countries. The session includes group work and presentation of the "Volunteerism on India" undertaken by students. The organizers are expecting 80 students from the UK, France, China, South Korea, Germany and India.

The Future Wave of School Volunteerism: Be the Textbook
by Vicki A. Davis

Notebook, skype, webcam and speakers: the equipment for virtual school volunteering.The CEO sits down at his desk, slides a few reports into his top desk drawer and straightens pictures on the wall behind his head. Today, he's volunteering at a middle school and he never has to leave his desk.

Businesses bemoan the state of education and rightly so: they need a well-educated, capable, responsible work force able to solve problems and connect with the right people within their company to get things done. Well, now, virtual tools are getting rid of their excuses for not volunteering. With free Skype, a webcam, and a headset, everyone from the CEO to the intern could potentially volunteer at almost any school around the world with a common language.

Advertisers flock to youtube to encourage average, everyday folks to make what Time Magazine is calling youmercials.

Well, I've seen the beginnings of YouTeach last week as my class interviewed nanotechnology expert, Earl Boysen. Boysen is the author of the easy-to-understand Nanotechnology for Dummies and the Understanding Nano Website.

I have a first cousin in college who is majoring in nanotechnology and I found nothing in our very up to date textbooks. So, after completing a chapter on computer hardware, my class researched and created a nanotechnology wiki for 70 minutes of class time.

Then, using Skype, our class speakers, webcam, and a microphone, my rural Georgia USA classroom dialed up Mr. Boysen in California.

What resulted was an interesting discussion about their future, which includes microscopic robotics, and particles that could potentially be ingrained in everything from their clothing to their toothpaste.

Then, Earl wrote a well-researched article in his NanoTechnology now column where he states:
"I hope that other teachers who can make time in their class schedule and master some simple-to-use technologies will consider calling in outside experts via the Internet as one way around current limitations of textbooks and curricula."

It was an "ah-ha" moment of sorts that turned the wheels of my mind in a new direction. When I worked in corporate America, "the company" was always encouraging us to participate in the community, but then, we didn't really have the opportunity because it would usually take 2-3 hours out of our day to head down to a local school to speak. We didn't have the time to really volunteer.

Goodbye excuse, hello kiddies!
What if a visionary company decided to have each of their employees "volunteer" at a variety of schools around the world for 30 minutes once a month?

After the initial set up, it would be just 30 minutes, no more. And that area could be around the corner or in any remote place with Internet access and less than $2500 worth of equipment on site. A PC, Skype, mike, webcam, projector, and speakers.

Knowledgeable experts in every field can now stop complaining about education and start contributing to education via these inexpensive, easy, connections.

Can we do this now? How can this happen?
Yes, you can volunteer now but I am not aware of any formal programs as of yet.

There are some that use the expensive virtual conferencing set ups that are being used in many schools. We cannot afford it so we have to use the free VOIP software, Skype. But in many ways, Skype is better because I can stay in my classroom. I am sure there are other VOIP type programs out there that would also work, but Skype is what I use.

So how will virtual volunteer connections be made?
These virtual volunteer connections are going to be made by the classroom teacher talking about butterflies who has a brother who is an entomologist across the country or the history teacher who has a buddy from college who works at the Smithsonian.

It is going to be some visionary CEO's who set the precedent and encourage their employees to "virtually volunteer" in their area of expertise. It is going to be visionary administrators who allow the installation of free services like Skype in their classrooms and set up methodologies to allow their classes to communicate and share with experts around the world.

Here is what has to happen in the classroom to make such connections:

1. Plan ahead, identify upcoming areas in your curriculum that could use augmentation and experts that you already know.
2. Learn to use Skype
3. Locate or connect with experts and teach them to use Skype.
4. Prepare your class.
5. Test the class Skype connection with a teacher in another classroom at your school.
6. Do a test call with your expert.
7. Conduct the Interview
8. Follow up after the Interview

Project turns volunteerism into public policy in Ecuador

Esmeraldas, Ecuador: The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme through its "Support to Intra-City Volunteerism Project (ICV)" has included volunteerism as a tool for urban development in Esmeraldas, Ecuador.

Mayor Ernesto Estupiñan will inaugurate the "Municipal Volunteer Office on 4 December, eve of International Volunteer Day (IVD) 2003.

Esmeraldas, a coastal city of approximately 140,000 inhabitants, is one of three pilot cities for the initiative, the other two being Falmouth, Jamaica and Amran, Yemen. The global ICV initiative aims to explore ways where volunteers can help in delivering public services. In many cases, volunteers can "fill the gap" between what local governments can provide and actual needs of communities.

The programme seeks to change the perception that volunteer efforts could substitute for services provided by local administrations. A concept has been developed to create partnerships with municipalities to increase the impact of public investments. According to Piedad Ortiz, a national UN Volunteer, "the communities have learned to organize themselves to change their surroundings and to better articulate their demands to local authorities".

UN Volunteer Berta Brusilovsky, who coordinates the ICV effort in Ecuador, estimates that through the volunteer and private sector contributions channeled in the project, over $170,000 in public works have been completed, with less than $30,000 in actual expenses incurred by the municipality. To date, four parks have been renovated, using community labour, materials donated by the private sector including playground equipment, along with technical support and tools from the municipality.

Development goals rest on volunteerism
by Martha Twumasi

Accra, Ghana: The Millennium Development Goals could "only be achieved in Ghana if people are prepared to sacrifice and contribute to the socio-economic development of the nation" Mike Ajdei, the Special Aide to the President, said at the official launch of International Volunteer Day and Coalition of Voluntary Organizations in Ghana.

He said that, in this era of world economic hardship, "it is only volunteering and sacrifices that can liberate and propel Ghana to a middle-income economy by 2015". Mike Adjei, mentioned that the time has come for volunteer organizations to be one and intensify their advocacy roles to make their voices heard.

He however cautioned against intra coalition conflict. "Let your decisions be participatory, so that it can win the support of all of you and stand the test of time". Norma Messam, United Nations Volunteer Programme Officer, in her speech, said the focus of activities this year, would be on youth volunteerism. These include embarking on clean up and painting exercise in selected schools in Tamale, blood donation drive in collaboration with Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and seminar on volunteerism.

The International Coalition of Volunteers in Ghana also seeks to provide a platform for youth volunteerism towards national development,
to design and manage activities and support of volunteerism organizations in Ghana.