The World YWCA at the Global Volunteering Conference

Over 200 international delegates met for three days to discuss the future of volunteerism, to examine ways to strengthen links with governments and the international community and to agree on a Declaration of Action on how institutions can better encourage and support volunteers in the future.

In her presentation, Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda discussed the importance of celebrating our community volunteers and recommended that:

• More importance should be placed on intergenerational and transformative approaches
• There should be more safe spaces for civic engagement and contribution
• We need to recognise, value, quantify and account our volunteers
• Innovate and harness the power of technology beyond social media
• Empower women and invest in communities
• Scale-up community innovation
• Allow citizens to influence decisions that affect their lives.

The key issues that were raised at the conference include:

• Due to the financial crisis, governments are unable to provide more resources for social programmes, and community volunteers are filling in the gaps as part of the social protection network
• Volunteering is intrinsic to human nature and the more it is "projectised" the more it fragments the notion of people's movement and volunteerism
• Women volunteer more through the unrecognised and under valued care work. More needs to be done for the work of women to be recognised in national accounts. Current efforts on gender budgeting could be an entry point.
• Attracting young volunteers and how to use new technologies and social media as a new way of volunteering
• More focus needs to be put on retaining volunteers - organisations need to be more creative about ways of honouring, motivating and retaining volunteers.

The conference concluded with a joint declaration on the role and contributions of volunteers for a sustainable future to inspire future UN resolutions on volunteering and to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers, as well as the 31st Red Cross Red Crescent International Conference. The Declaration aims to “value, recognise and encourage the contribution of volunteering to people, their communities and our planet,” and as UNV Executive Coordinator, Flavia Pansieri, said "volunteering is not an add-on.  It's a serious element of sustainability". What is needed is global recognition, support and advocacy for volunteers as they help build peace and sustainable development from the grassroots up.