Key note speech by Theo Van Loon, International Association for Volunteer Effort

Symposium international sur le Volontariat et le développement de compétences humaines dans la société de l'information, Dakar, 23 - 25 octobre 2003

1. Introduction

Your Excellency Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all I would like to apologize for the absence of IAVE's World President, madam Liz Burns.

Like so many volunteer organisations, IAVE has a lot of work to do, but only a few people to do it! So, Liz Burns is very sorry that she cannot be with us in this conference and she asked me to replace her.

My name is Theo van Loon, I am from the Netherlands, worked 22 years as the general director of the National Volunteer Centre there, and now I am developing a Program for IAVE, as their Director of Programmes.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour for me to replace the IAVE President and to be allowed to address this conference.

2. The Information Society

I have to confess that I myself am not an expert in the field of Information Technology: my cell phone, as my children told me, can be used for many things, and also for making phone calls ! And making phone calls is the only thing I want to do with it.

But preparing myself on this symposium, I remembered the 16th IAVE World Conference in Amsterdam: my organisation was responsible for the organisation of this international conference at the start of the UN International Year of Volunteers 2001.

A beautiful conference with 1700 participants from 122 countries, with 164 workshops, 15 partnership meetings, a youth forum with 160 participants from all over the world, 22 plenary speakers and almost 300 scholarships.

I give you these facts and figures, only to make you aware of the size of the organisation and especially of the worldwide communication that is needed to organise it.

I remember that we often said that we could not have done it without the new information technology, without Internet and e-mail. And also that we couldn't imagine how the former conferences have been organised: how did they do that ??? You cannot imagine anymore.

However: we also learned about the risks of the new information technology. Because we worked with it, we got used to it. For example: we sent out a call for papers by e-mail and and also on paper.

But people/organisations who were not able to communicate through e-mail, and as a consequence were much slower in responding than other people, were almost excluded.

This is exactly the problem we have to talk about in this conference, and try to find solutions: how to work with the new technology in a way that people are included in the volunteer sector, not excluded from it.

I will come back to this later.But first I would like to say some words about IAVE: the International Association for Volunteer Effort: although I hope that many of you know this organisation already.

IAVE was created in 1970 by a small group of volunteers from throughout the world who shared a deep belief in the importance of volunteering and the value of international exchange as a way to build bridges among people.

IAVE was established to encourage, promote and support volunteer effort worldwide.

Today IAVE is a network organisation, with 800 individual and organizational members in over 95 countries, governed by an elected international board of directors.

IAVE has a special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It is the only worldwide membership organisation that exists to promote expanded and more effective volunteering.

Every two years since 1970 IAVE has co-sponsored with a host country the World Volunteer Conference: the next one will be in August 2004 in Barcelona, Spain.

IAVE also co-sponsors regional conferences and meetings in each region of the world: in 2003 we will have regional conferences in Costa Rica, Manila and Algeria.

Concrete products of IAVE are for example: IAVE News, the IAVE Website (almost renewed), the Worldwide Directory of Volunteer Centres (will be renewed next year), the Universal Declaration on Volunteering and the Global Agenda for Action (both from the Amsterdam -conference).

Right now we try to develop a Programme with new activities, products and services, that will contribute to the main mission of IAVE: to strengthen and support volunteering worldwide.

In the coming years IAVE wants to execute a programme of Global Forums: meetings/conferences on specific issues related to volunteering. The first one we hope to organise will be a Global Forum on Volunteering and Refugees. Other issues could be for example: ageing and volunteering, service learning, and of course: information society and volunteering.

And this brings me back to this conference:

IAVE wants to give a strong message of support to this conference and to the World Summit on the Information Society.

IAVE has been paying particular attention this year to the impact of the Information Society on volunteering, and of the impact of volunteering on the Information Society, especially through local initiatives to reduce the digital divide and on-line volunteering.

We are working with partners in the Asia Pacific region to relaunch the IAVE website and to develop it as a more interactive tool for our members around the world.

IAVE is also partner in the Volunteer Family: a group of organisations that prepared this conference as a starting point for the debates at the world summit in December this year.

3. Role of Volunteers in the Information Society

We will talk about this issue extensively during the coming days, so I will only give you some of my thoughts about it.

First we have to think about the role of volunteers in general: and also in different countries, cultures and periods of time.
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In 2001 we published the book Volunteering Worldwide: a very interesting overview of volunteering in 21 countries from al regions of the world. Of course there are many

differences between countries and cultures, but we can say that volunteers play a very important role in every country and region of the world.

Their role is not limited to delivering services, or giving help: they also have a very important role as change-agents.

A lot of innovation comes from volunteer initiatives: because civilians are the first ones to experience problems and also opportunities and very often they do not wait for others (like governments) to solve a problem.

The Japanese government needed an earthquake to discover that a lot of Japanese people are willing to help when help is needed: this was the beginning of the International Year 2001!

So: as volunteers are in the middle of their society, even more than non-volunteers as research always shows us, they experience the change into an information society themselves and yes: they use it to create new opportunities.

E volunteering is a well-known example of this. In my country we developed a project called Senior-Web: volunteers helping the elderly to learn the new technology and to make use of it. Seniors can chat at the Internet with their suns/daughters or grandsons/-daughters.! And volunteers show them the way to do this.

Another example: a little bit tricky one, but I consider the anti-Globalisation movement as a new form of action oriented volunteering, making use of the new technology: they use the internet extensively to organise their world-movement.

In my opinion there is also a need for volunteer organisations to adopt the new technologies and work with it.

First because they have to work in an effective and efficient way to realise their mission.

Second because they have to be attractive organisations for the volunteers themselves. Especially young people want to work, and feel very familiar with information technology: it makes a volunteer organisation more attractive to certain groups (or more 'sexy' as was said at the Amsterdam conference).

Of course: new opportunities create new problems and the digital divide is one of these potential problems.

A digital divide that is not only a north-south problem, but also a divide between urban and rural areas and between generations: the majority of the world's population has yet to benefit from the new technology.

But, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: 'the digital divide can be bridged'.

And we all know that volunteering is a bridging force in building a civil society of social cohesion and inclusion.

IAVE wants to express its hope and faith that this conference will make an important and substantial contribution to this. We believe that today is an important milestone leading up to the World summit.

We like to thank you, Mr. President for your hospitality and the opportunity you are offering the volunteer family worldwide to be part of the Information Society.

Thank you.