Throughout the event, representatives from Member States, UN entities, civil society, including volunteer organizations, the private sector, academia and the world’s volunteers will come together to reimagine volunteering for the 2030 Agenda. More than 13,000 people have registered their attendance. To join and receive the links to the sessions, please register at volunteerSDGs.org.

Knowledge about volunteering and its practices, dynamics, benefits and challenges, is spread across many stakeholders across the globe. To improve the integration of volunteerism in the 2030 Agenda, policy makers and development practitioners need specific types of knowledge to improve policy and practice. The goal of the UNV Knowledge Portal is to consolidate and make volunteering data accessible to inform policy and advocacy. It matches those who collect data and those who make policy. The portal covers different areas of evidence across three sections:

Knowledge about volunteering and its practices, dynamics, benefits and challenges, is spread across many stakeholders across the globe. To improve the integration of volunteerism in the 2030 Agenda, policy makers and development practitioners need specific types of knowledge to improve policy and practice. The goal of the UNV Knowledge Portal is to consolidate and make volunteering data accessible to inform policy and advocacy. It matches those who collect data and those who make policy. The portal covers different areas of evidence across three sections:

In the Arab region, volunteering is founded on the collectivist principle of Al faza’a, a surge of solidarity, where people volunteer in support of others, regardless of socioeconomic status. In the African continent, volunteering is best described as the ultimate expression of social solidarity.

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2020 is a year of urgency – and not just because of the coronavirus outbreak. Rising inequalities, long-lasting conflicts, complex emergencies, climate crisis, migration, displacement and the threat of ecosystem collapse currently affect the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. Locally led responses to these challenges are critical and volunteers are often at the helm of local efforts.

This paper is divided into three parts. The first explores attempts to capture and describe how volunteering has changed over the years. This section examines the dominant conceptualizations of volunteering as a social practice and explores how research has taken into account the contribution of volunteering to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda. The second section briefly revisits the 1999 typology and discusses how it can be revised and updated in light of the changes described.

What does volunteering for the GTM entail? The selected volunteers will be given roles including, but not limited to, the following:

UNV supported 30 volunteers from Volunteers Without Borders by providing flyers and megaphones to facilitate an awareness-raising initiative in the vulnerable communities of Slipway, West Point and Clara Town, in Montserrado County. The volunteers mobilized Clara Town marketers, who provided a sound system that helped spread information on COVID-19, while the community chairperson accompanied the team throughout the entire activity.