Imagine the impact of volunteers joining forces around the world for one day of service! Can you commit to organize a service project in your community on Saturday, May 7? It can be small or large, indoors or outside, cleaning a park or tutoring youth – anything you want it to be. The point – and the goal – is to make a statement about the power of volunteer movements!

The goal is 50 countries around the world. In the words of Karen Baker, California’s Secretary of Service and Volunteerism, “Let’s not just meet our goal, let’s shatter it. Together we can show the world what volunteerism in action really looks like.”

The following countries will be participating: Locations throughout the United States, Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Gambia, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Haiti (in NYC), Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lesotho, Liberia, Lithuania, Moldova, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, Portugal, Rwanda, Samoa, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Zambia

This event is co-hosted by Meridian International Center’s Global Service Leaders Initiative (GSLI) and VOLiNTEER. GSLI develops leaders around the world in the volunteer service sector. In spring 2010, Meridian helped launch VOLiNTEER, an international network connecting leaders from more than 95 countries to collaborate on best practices and grow their effectiveness in their home countries. A majority of these leaders were participants in a U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program, Volunteerism: United We Serve, hosted by Meridian International Center.

Please Download “International Day of Service” flyer

• in English
• in Spanish
• in French
• in Russian
• in Arabic

For more information, please contact:
Meg Poole
Director, Global Service Leaders Initiative
Meridian International Center
mpoole@meridian.org

Social media information:

• Like us on Facebook.
• RSVP to the May 7 International Day of Service.
• Follow us on Twitter. Join the conversation by adding “#VOLiNTEER” to your tweets — adding that hashtag in your tweet is the way to have your tweet show up in the May 7 twitter stream.
• Blog about your May 7 event, on our website or your own (send us a link to your blog so that we can share it).
• Post videos of your May 7 event on YouTube, and send us the link so we can put them on our website as well.
• View our Flickr account of our VOLiNTEERs who are organizing service projects on May 7. Help us capture pictures of your project by emailing them to trying85line@photos.flickr.com — if you include your city and country in the subject line of your email (it should read tags: “Your City” “Your Country” — with quotation marks if your city or country is more than one word) it will show up on our map above!

IVD was established by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 40/212 on 17 December 1985. Since then, governments, the UN system and civil society organizations have successfully joined volunteers around the world to celebrate the Day on 5 December.

Today was dedicated to “The Pitch,” sponsored by UBS, in which 5 non-profit volunteer organizations were able to make a 5 minute “pitch” for prize money to implement their programs. A total of $75,000 was at stake — $15,000 for the audience favorite, and $60,000, which could be split, to the judges’ favorite(s).

The presenters had obviously worked very hard on their presentations, and all of them presented compelling cases for funding. Before presenting the awards, the judges commented on all of the proposals. The judges deemed HandsOn Manila’s presentation the most engaging. HandsOn Manila, which operates in a country in which 50% of the population are under age 24, asked for funding to extend its “Sherpa” program to make youth volunteers into “sherpas” for spreading volunteerism. During the presentation, the judges asked for outcomes and metrics, such as how many hours sherpas serve and how long they stay with the program. HandsOn Manila responded that some sherpas have been in the sherpa program for all 10 years of its existence.

The presentation of NAVNET, from Kenya, was deemed the most thought provoking. The judges commended the presenters for having a clear statement of impact. NAVNET’s proposal would empower 120 youth ambassadors that would help 1500 impoverished youth.

Osmijeh was a program in Bosnia Herzogovina that helped post-conflict youth through working with the school system. The judges appreciated that the program leveraged the school infrastructure, and called the presentation the most touching.

Volunteer21 presented a pitch for connecting volunteers in Asia through conferences and an online platform. The judges were impressed that the program was the only “new” program — the only one that was not currently in existence. The judges called the presentation the most ambitious.

The final presentation was by YWCA Rwanda, which helped orphans. The funding would help scale the program from 11 to 13 districts, out of 30 in Rwanda. In Rwanda, out of a population of 10.7 million, 1.2 million are orphans. The judges called the project the most needy.

The audience prize went to YMCA Rwanda. The judges ended up splitting their portion of the prize money, with half to YWCA Rwanda, and half to Osmijeh.

Gotta go, we’re off to local NGO site visits this afternoon.

Yesterday was filled with lots of valuable panels and sessions, giving lots of great ideas that will be useful moving forward. In the first panel, David Boyd-Thomas, Head of Corporate Responsibility & Community Affairs Asia Pacific, UBS, spoke of a pilot program they’ve implemented whereby UBS employees in India connect as mentors to non-profit leaders in India. They had a local partner to implement these connections, and their employees formed mentorships which were ongoing, with some employees even traveling to visit the local NGO on their own dime.

I then went to a seminar titled “Nobody Washes a Rented Car: Building International Partnerships with the Ownership to Last,” in which Matthew Clausen, Vice President of Partners of the Americas, and Summer Tsao, Coordinator of Internaitonal Volunteer Project, Eden Social Welfare Foundation, gave some of their lessons learned for creating lasting sustainable partnerships. The conversation was moderated by Kathleen Dennis, Executive Director of IAVE, who is based in Washington, DC.

In the last session of the day, we learned about recent trends in volunteering and service. The U.S. perspective was given by Gared Jones, Vice President of Global Service, Points of Light Institute, and the Australian perspective was given by Amanda Everton, National Manager of Education, Policy and Research, Volunteering Australia. The panel was moderated by Lam Moy Yin, Vice-Chairperson of Managing and Organising Volunteer Efforts (MOVE). MOVE has an online platform which allows volunteer managers to communicate, sharing best practices and lessons learned, and receiving help on challenging issues that emerge. Common themes that emerged focused on the trend towards episodic volunteering — volunteering for a one-off project rather than a sustaining commitment. Prompted by Points of Light’s pointing towards Sparked by the Extraordinaries as an example of “micro-volunteering,” the group brought up the challenges of narrowing a volunteer project down to small bits, as well as the possibility that micro-volunteering can spark a desire for a deeper relationship between volunteer and volunteer organization.

We then concluding with “The Singapore Experience,” where we traveled in buses around Singapore to experience some of Singapore’s traditional foods. The experience became a bonding experience for each bus. My bus contained representatives from Korea, Canada, New York, Indianapolis, and Washington, DC, among others.

Stay tuned for further news on what’s happening here, plus some highlights and pictures from the events.

Today was very interesting and instructive. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon sent a video of well-wishes for conference attendees, remarking that “Volunteering unites individuals and countries around a common cause.” To me, as well as to many of you, I’m sure, those words ring true.

The conference is divided into the following five tracks, but participants may go to sessions in any of the tracks: The Power of One, Many Helping Hands, From Good to Great, Mega Volunteering Trends, and Strategic Issues in Volunteer Management. It’s hard to decide which sessions to go to because they all look so good, but I’m focusing on the ones that are most relevant to our initiative — those that touch on working to build understanding across sectors and geographic borders.

One of the highlights was hearing from Jet Li, who spoke on how he volunteers because he has realized that volunteering and giving back is what makes him truly happy. Because volunteering makes him happy, he makes it a priority for him: “Don’t tell me no time. You can always find time to do what you want to do.” Jet Li founded the One Foundation based on the principal that 1 Person + 1 Dollar/Yuan + 1 Month = 1 Big Family.

Jet Li’s comments reiterate a theme found throughout the day of the new trend of flexible volunteering. Rather than requiring volunteers to fit into a pattern of a certain number of committed hours per day or per week, flexible volunteering allows volunteers to easily fit volunteering into their busy schedules. Making it easier to volunteer should help improve volunteering numbers and retention rates for volunteers.

More blog posts to come over the next few days!

David Ray from Points of Light Institute spoke about how, in developing the next strategic plan, Points of Light is looking at new ways of engaging globally to develop its international components in a way that is purposeful and intentional. This conversation is informing how we play that out and go forward over the next several years. Points of Light is looking at ways technology can help facilitate the identification, empowerment, and celebration of service and volunteerism leaders throughout the world.