FROM THE EDITOR
We’ve got a great issue for this month with LOTS of news from IAVE and about IYV+10. Also, at the very end, there is exciting news about International Volunteer Day 2009 and two opportunities for YOU to contribute to planning for IYV+10 and to IAVE Japan’s planning for their celebration of IVD. So…read all the way to the end!
— Kenn Allen
NEWS FROM IAVE
from the world president
I am pleased to announce several changes in IAVE’s board of directors and professional consultant support.
At my request, Kathleen Dennis, the treasurer of IAVE and the North American Representative to IAVE Board, has agreed to serve, as a consultant, as the executive secretary of IAVE effective from September 1. She served as the Executive Director of IAVE for 3 years from 2000 to 2002, bringing strong professional leadership to IAVE in the preparation for and realization of the International Year of Volunteers in 2001. She will augment my work and will supervise IAVE’s secretariat offices scattered around the world. As a consequence of this appointment, she has resigned from the IAVE Board representing North America.
To fill that vacant position, the IAVE Executive Committee has appointed Mr. David Styers who works as a Senior Governance Consultant at BoardSource in Washington, D.C., a national nonprofit organization focused on building the effectiveness of the boards of nonprofit organizations. He previously worked at the Points of Light Foundation as Senior Director working with their nationwide network of Volunteer Centers.
Mr. Sam Santiago, global Director for Workforce Giving and Volunteerism at American Airlines has been named to the IAVE board of directors as Corporate Representative, replacing Claudia McNamee who resigned when she moved from the corporate world to the nonprofit community. Sam represents American Airlines on the Global Corporate Volunteer Council.
Ms. Tan Chee Koon has resigned as representative for National Volunteer Centers on the IAVE board to concentrate her effort on the success of the 21st IAVE World Volunteer Conference in Singapore in January 2011. Her replacement will be named soon.
IAVE deeply appreciates the contribution made by the departing board members while welcoming the new members. The new appointments, especially the appointment of Kathi Dennis and the newly expanded commitment of Sarah Hayes as the consultant director of GCVC will increase our capacity to give the leadership needed for successful management of our organization towards the 21st World Volunteer Conference and fulfillment of action plans for the 10th anniversary of IYV.
Patricia nabti elected to iave board from the arab nations region
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Patricia Nabti has been elected to the IAVE board as Regional Representative for the Arab Nations Region by members from the region.
Dr. Nabti is the Founder and Director of the Association for Volunteer Services, established “to promote, facilitate, and improve volunteering and community service throughout Lebanon and beyond” (www.avs.org.lb). Its programs have included a volunteer directory (6 editions), volunteer opportunities fairs, consulting and training on volunteer management, and Global Youth Service Days, for which AVS has been the National Lead Agency since 2001.
Dr. Nabti wrote the book, Learning to CARE: Education, Volunteering, and Community Service in 2006 (the Arabic edition was published in January, 2009). Learning to CARE is a 400-page manual for schools to develop effective service programs. She has provided training on school service programs in Lebanon, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates and has served as a consultant and trainer on broader issues of volunteerism in Lebanon, Egypt, and Kuwait. Dr. Nabti attended four IAVE world conferences (Amsterdam, Seoul, Barcelona, and New Delhi) and one Asia-Pacific regional conference (Hong Kong). She is a cultural anthropologist with a focus on the Arab World, and has traveled extensively in the region.
She may be reached at pnabti@gmail.com.
In announcing the results of the election, Dr. Amelita Go, Chair of the IAVE Nominating and Elections Committee, thanked both Dr. Nabti and Ms. Ghinwa Zeineddine of Kuwait for their willingness to stand for election. Dr. Kang-Hyun Lee echoed that when he wrote, “We look forward to working with both of you in the years ahead to strengthen IAVE’s contribution to volunteering in the Arab Nations.”
iave board to meet in paris, october 10-12
The IAVE board will hold its annual meeting Paris, October 10-12 at the invitation and with the support pf France Bénévolat, the national volunteer center in France.
Our World President as Ambassador
One of the duties of the IAVE World President is to represent the organization throughout the world. In recent months, Dr. Lee has:
- Consulted with Ambassador Kim Won-Soo, Deputy Chef de Cabinet for the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon on plans for celebration of IYV+10.
- Visited Madam Virginia Davide, IAVE National Representative of the Philippines and wife of the Ambassador to the United Nations from the Philippines.
- Attended the CEV General Assembly in Prague and given a plenary speech on promotion of corporate volunteerism;
- Attended the All Russian Volunteer Conference in Moscow and gave two lecture and plenary speeches. He met with the chairman of the Public Relations Committee of the Russian Parliament to discuss the importance of legislation supportive of volunteering. He also met with the Director of Human Resources of the Sochi Winter Olympic Organizing Committee to discuss effective volunteer involvement in the 2014 Olympic Games.
- As a board member of the Peter Drucker Society in Korea, he co-organized the 2009 Drucker Centennial Conference and arranged Dr. Francis Hesselbein to visit the Minister of Women and Family Affairs to discuss about women’s volunteering.
- Attended and gave a plenary speech on Trends of Volunteerism at the 3rd National Volunteer Conference in Korea and chaired a session on the development of national volunteer centers.
gCVC To hold one day meeting in PARIS
There will be a meeting of G-CVC members on October 13, 2009, following the IAVE Board Meeting being held at France Benevolat October 10-12. The G-CVC meeting will be held at the Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel and Conference Center in Paris. This meeting is open to all G-CVC member representatives, and local European representatives are encouraged to attend. Dr. Kang-Hyun Lee, IAVE World President, will be in attendance, as well as representatives from the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and Engage.
This will be the sixth G-CVC meeting held since the launch of this special corporate initiative in November of 2006 at the IAVE World Volunteer Conference in New Delhi, India. Present at the launch and first G-CVC meeting were the six founding companies – Citi, Disney, Levi Strauss & Co., Samsung, UPS and Vale. The G-CVC now has twenty-one members, and continues to grow. We hope that many of those companies will be represented in Paris!
Topics for the meeting include the G-CVC Research Project, corporate volunteering as it is carried out in France and throughout Europe, the work of IBLF and Engage, a report from the recent CSR conference in Prague, and much more.
news about Iyv+10
IYV+10…the countdown continues
ONLY 15 MONTHS TO GO! 2011 is the 10th Anniversary of the United Nation’s International Year of Volunteers in 2001. As it did in 2001, IAVE is preparing to give leadership to the nongovernmental volunteer community in celebrating this global recognition of volunteering.
Work is beginning throughout the world to celebrate the year, as the next two articles tell us.
UNV Sponsored Planning Meeting for IYV+10 SET
IAVE has been invited to participate in a meeting sponsored by United Nations Volunteers to discuss “how to work together in preparation for the IYV+10” to be held October 22 at UNV headquarters in Bonn, Germany.
The letter of invitation from Flavia Pansieri, Executive Coordinator of UNV, cited the successful consultative workshop in December 2007, hosted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) which helped shape the resolution, passed in December 2008 calling for activities to mark the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers in 2011. The meeting “will draw together a representative group of stakeholders in volunteerism from civil society, volunteer involving organizations, the donor community, UN entities and multilateral groups.”
She notes that UNV “would be glad to exchange ideas on how best to join forces and enhance effectiveness, impact and sustainability of our activities.”
IAVE plans to participate in the meeting and welcomes hearing from members about your plans for IYV+10 that can be shared with participants. Please send them to Kathi Dennis at kathi@civilsocietyconsulting.com.
The European Year of Volunteering 2011 – For You, With You
[This article comes to us from the European Volunteer Centre. It was written by Rebekka Opfermann. For further information, please contact Cândida Salgado Silva at Candida.salgadosilva@cev.be. More on EYV2011 can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/citizenship/news/news820_en.htm.]
2011 will be the European Year of Volunteering (EYV 2011)!
Following the wish of Europe’s citizens, the European Commission announced the year, with a budget of about 6 million euros at its disposal.
The announcement of the European Year 2011 did not come about as a happy accident. It is the successful outcome of an intensive 2-year campaign of the Alliance of European NGO Networks (the EYV 2011 Alliance) with a particular interest in volunteering, working towards the announcement of the EYV 2011. This Alliance has pulled its weight behind the campaign, closely cooperating with the European Parliament, and which finally led to the proposal for EYV2011 prepared by the EC on July 3, 2009.
Not only will the European Year 2011 raise awareness for volunteering, it also aims at improving the conditions for volunteering and its quality. Above that it will be a year recognizing the efforts, commitment and volunteering spirit for over 100 million Europeans that are already engaged in voluntary activities.
As volunteers translate the European values into action and make solidarity and tolerance become alive day by day, so the EYV 2011 will be alive and active. The EYV 2011 will be special, as it will not only be a year for volunteers, but also a year with volunteers.
Let’s SLOGO
Volunteer engagement and volunteer spirit have already started working towards the year. Currently the EYV 2011 Alliance is running the “Let’s Slogo” competition in order to select a logo and slogan for the Year. \
This is the first time that citizens can directly engage and influence the visual image of a European Year. Everyone can submit logo and slogan ideas until September 18 on www.eyv2011.eu. The winner will be selected by a public online voting and by a jury of experts, and the final decision announced on December 16 during the award ceremony hosted by the European Commission.
As the proposals for the logo and slogan continue to arrive, we see that each of them contains a vision and a promise for an engaging and long-lasting European Year of Volunteering 2011.
IAVE Japan Plans for IYV+10
[In the last issue, we reported that Akiko Seto has resumed her leadership role for IAVE Japan and that the organization has begun a rebuilding period. This article and a second, below, are their first reports on that work.]
According to UNV representative in Japan, the state of volunteerism will be presented at the UN General Assembly in December, 2011. In conjunction, ILO (International Labor Organization) and John Hopkins University (JHU) collaborated to work for developing a recommended procedure for measuring volunteer work through official labor force surveys in countries throughout the world. The articles were referred to the E-IAVE News in July-Aug.-Sep.2008 issues.
For the purpose of obtaining the information on Japan’s position to the above and also emphasizing the IAVE’s supporting position, Akiko Seto, president of IAVE Japan, and Eiko Shimada, vice president, visited Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and met the persons in charge of national census statistics. Among them, there was a person who attended the 18th International Conference of Labor Statisticians held during Nov. 24 – Dec. 5, 2008.
In Japan, volunteer related questions are included in the basic life survey taking every five years. Next one will be taken in the year of 2011. It includes the area of volunteer related questions, such as what sort of volunteer activities you joined, how often, and doing under organizations or individually with members of family, school, companies, community, friends or personally. Additional questions require filling out “a day” chart, which is divided by 15 min. how you spend a day. what you do. Volunteer and social activities are listed as one of the elements in the chart.
Further study will be continued whether and how they can incorporate with the ILO manual on the measurement of volunteer work. We discussed the importance of utilizing media source for leading the people to positive participation in survey. Statistics Bureau and IAVE Japan work cooperatively for implementation of volunteer work measurement.
News from iave members
IAVE JAPAN NEEDS YOUR HELP!
IAVE Japan is seeking examples of family volunteer activities to help them plan for International Volunteer Day 2009. Here is their story.
The UN designated December 5th as “International Volunteer Day” in 1985. As IAVE holds special consultative status with the UN ECOSOC Committee since 1986, and associate status with the UN Department of Public Information, we, IAVE Japan, will take a lead in Japan to promote IVD and volunteerism as well in Japan. It is unfortunate that almost none of Japanese knows IVD in Japan. Therefore, we asked NGOs, volunteer groups and companies to put the IVD logo, which can be easily copied from UN web site, on the flyers, materials, information of the event they plan to hold on Dec. 5th. It is not necessary to do it on the exact date, Dec. 5, but we tell them to use the logo for any volunteer event, meeting, activities before and after within two or three weeks. IAVE Japan plans to conduct “Family Volunteer Session” on Dec. 5.
For that purpose, we are collecting case examples of family volunteer activities you participated, performed or coordinated in the past years.
Would you provide us information to IAVE Japan at office@iavejapan.org by the end of October 2009? Thank you for your kind cooperation.
GCVC Company Spotlight
American airlines
[This article was written by Sarah Hayes, IAVE consultant who manages the Global Corporate Volunteer Council. She can be reached at sarah@civilsocietyconsulting.com.]
The Global Corporate Volunteer Council welcomed American Airlines as one of our members in the summer/fall of 2008. Since their joining, Sam Santiago, the Director of Workforce Giving and Volunteerism, has been an active participant in both our G-CVC meeting in Rio de Janeiro and in Sausalito, and also spoke effectively for IAVE and the G-CVC at the CEV Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in Prague.
Additionally, if you have ever been on an American Airlines flight and heard the on-flight announcements in Spanish, then you have heard Sam’s deep and eloquent voice! We are proud to call American Airlines one of our valued G-CVC members, and are greatly appreciative of their involvement and support.
American Airlines is a global airline based in Fort Worth, Texas, USA and operates in more than 40 countries. American Airlines has been in business for over 80 years. Although involved in the community in many ways throughout the years, AA launched a formal employee volunteer program, American Volunteers, in 2007. American Airlines employees have the unique opportunity to be involved in the community both at home but also in the places where they are based and in the places that they fly to. Formalizing the program and recognizing the great efforts of AA employees has been welcomed throughout the company and they are excited at the growth in activities since the launch.
AA has recently re-structured Community Affairs within Corporate Citizenship to be even more employee-friendly and impactful to communities, engaging more employee “champions” and giving them more responsibility to oversee the community initiatives, as well as to provide input into what AA focuses on in the community. Within this new structure it is expected that there will be even more penetration into the business of the airline with the message of the benefits of community service and volunteerism, and the importance that AA places on this type of involvement.
AA is a key partner with Airline Ambassadors International, founded by American Airlines flight attendants, who volunteer use of their flight privileges to help children in need throughout the world. In 2008 Airline Ambassadors hand delivered 3.5 million dollars in medicine, medical supplies, food, clothing and school supplies directly to children in need; and escorted 161 children for life changing surgeries and orphans to new homes. Volunteers contributed 98,000 hours of volunteer service
AA has an organization called Medical Wings International, which, among other things, has donated and transported hundreds of wheelchairs to organizations around the world. Another humanitarian organization founded by American Airlines flight attendants is Airline Ambassadors International. Volunteers use their flight privileges to help children in need throughout the world. Airline Ambassadors also leads recruitment and training of “Champions for Children” – the volunteer flight attendants and other employee volunteers who participate in UNICEF’s Change for Good program on American AirlineChange for Good is an innovative partnership established in 1987 between UNICEF and the aviation industry to help the world’s most underprivileged and vulnerable children. This program is proudly supported by Airline Ambassadors who have recruited 1600 volunteer flight attendants to participate.
AA is the sole U.S.-based carrier among nearly a dozen international airlines that support the Change for Good program. It is the airline’s largest and one of the longest running “in-flight” charitable programs and the company’s largest employee engagement program, bringing in the largest amount in donations.
Change for Good invites travelers on select domestic and international American Airlines flights to contribute their unused domestic and foreign coins and currency, which are collected by flight attendants, or to make donations in AA’s Admirals Clubs and Flagship Lounges worldwide. Flight attendants volunteer to make onboard announcements and collect donations, and an in-flight video informs passengers about the Change for Good program and the projects the funds support. According to our G-CVC representative, Sam Santiago, 50% of the funds collected on their flights support HIV/AIDS Programs in Latin America, and the remaining 50% are split between general UNICEF programs and programs voted on by the Champions. AA now has more than 1,600 Champions for Children volunteers company-wide, who have collected more than $1.7 million USD since a program re-launch in December 2006.
With their new structure for more impact, amazing and committed volunteers, and initiatives like Change for Good – American Airlines is a formidable and well-respected part of the global volunteering movement. We are happy they are a part of IAVE and the Global Corporate Volunteer Council!
News from the global volunteer community
UNV Sets Theme for International Volunteer Day 2009
United Nations Volunteers has announced the theme “Volunteering for Our Planet” for the upcoming International Volunteer Day – December 5, 2009. In her announcement, Flavia Pansieri, Executive Coordinator of UNV, says: “On 5 December…UNV will celebrate International Volunteer Day (IVD), which falls 48 hours before the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
“To celebrate IVD and to remind us of our common commitment to the environment, the theme of the Day will be: ‘Volunteering for our Planet’.
“I would hereby like to encourage each of us to do our part in combating climate change: to show that action is needed but tangible results are possible; and to demonstrate to the conference participants in Copenhagen that we can all make a difference together.”
For more information, go to http://www.unv.org/en/current-highlight/volunteering-for-our-planet.html and in the right column look for the download of the Volunteering for Our Planet Fact Sheet.
United States to Recognize September 11 as National Day of Service and Remembrance
Beginning this year, the United States will commemorate September 11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance.
Legislation establishing the day was passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this year and signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 21, 2009.
The concept of the day had its origin in 2002 with the support of a group of families of survivors of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Although not a legal (bank) holiday, it is a time for Americans to pause and remember the events of that day and to join together in service to their nation.
The website http://www.911dayofservice.org describes the purpose of the day in this way:
“Our mission is to honor the victims of 9/11 and those who rose to service in response to the attacks by encouraging all Americans and others throughout the world to pledge to voluntarily perform at least one good deed, or another service activity on 9/11 each year. In this way we hope to create a lasting and forward-looking legacy — annually rekindling the spirit of service, tolerance, and compassion that unified America and the world in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.”
To learn more, please visit that website or http://www.serve.gov/, the U.S. government sponsored website that has been created to promote and support volunteering.
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three ways you can participate NOW!
Number One
Send your ideas and plans for IYV+10 to Kathi Dennis to be shared with UNV and other international voluntary organizations at the UNV-sponsored meeting in October. See the story in the “IYV+10” section. Respond to kathi@civilsocietyconsulting.com.
Number Two
Respond to IAVE Japan’s request for your examples of family volunteer involvement. See the story in the “News from IAVE Members” section. Respond to office@iavejapan.org.
Number Three
Help us keep E-IAVE coming every month. We need:
- Stories about your organization and how volunteers are involved;
- Stories about your individual volunteer activities;
- “Opinion pieces”, editorial comments, etc about volunteering in your country or around the world;
- Reports on the “state of health” of volunteering around the world.
Think of it this way – what would you most like to read about in E-IAVE about volunteering in other countries and the work of other members? Then send us something similar from your country.
Respond to kenn@civilsocietyconsulting.com.
Thanks!
