Archive for the ‘international volunteering’ Category
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Our Year, Our Voice
On the 18th December 2009, The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed that the following year beginning the 12th August 2010 (that’s TODAY!) was to be known as The International Year of Youth: Dialogue and Mutual Understanding. This exciting development means that The General Assembly has spent the last month calling on governments, communities and individuals worldwide to support youth-focused activities on a local, national and international scale.
The United Nations have put specific focus on enhancing ‘Dialogue and Mutual Understanding’- the objective being to encourage communication and acceptance across generations and cultures; to promote the ideals of peace, respect for human rights, freedom, and solidarity.
So what does this mean to me?
It would appear that authorities everywhere now understand the importance of acknowledging the voice of youth in regards to social debate. Governments feel it is imperative that young people are engaged in a significant and sustainable manner and they are now turning to young people everywhere in an attempt to improve relationships, enhance understanding and solidify respect between generations, cultures and societies.
“The International Year is about advancing the full and effective participation of youth in all aspects of society,” UN Focal Point on Youth Nicola Shepherd said. “We encourage all sectors of society to work in partnership with youth and youth organizations to better understand their needs and concerns and to recognize the contributions that they can make to society.”
Young people are a major human resource for community development, technological innovation and positive social change. Governments are now trying to harness the energy, imagination and initiative of the world’s youth in an effort to overcome the challenges facing each and every one of us; from enhancing peace to improving the current economic condition.
As a youth-focused organisation, everyone at v is very excited about taking advantage of this occasion and developing ideas to ensure this year is a successful and empowering occasion for young people everywhere. This is an amazing opportunity for youth from all around the world to demonstrate their commitment to fruitful dialogue, contributing and sharing ideas, and advancing mutual understanding.
So what next?
Now that The General Assembly has acknowledged the potential of young people everywhere, there’s never been a better time to try your hand at something new. This is the perfect opportunity to enhance your presence in your local community, get your voice heard and try to make a difference.
Please visit: http://social.un.org/youthyear/ for more information on The International Year of Youth.
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“Volunteering is now cool” - rallying cry from rent-a-crowd for non-profits
We were always going to fall in love with an “unincorporated disorganisation” who state their vision as “a world where volunteering is as mainstream as cheeseburgers and breathing.” Youth Tree is a group of young volunteers from Western Australia who are shaking up volunteering Down Under.
They’ve just launched the Big Help Mob, a diverse army of 100+ young volunteers who regularly get together to do favours for non-profits. Then they celebrate with “enormous, ludicrous flash mobs”.
Any local non-profit can submit an idea for how this rent-a-crowd could help them out, via their website. The best ideas are taken on. So all kinds of causes, charities, people, animals or environments can benefit from a sudden, one-off burst of people-power.
Did we mention that we love it?
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Help-Portrait: “The greatest thing we’ve ever done with our cameras”
The vlabsblog team has been inspired and excited by the success of Help-Portrait, an innovative photography project which successfully spread masses of festive joy by creating 40,000 free portraits for people to treasure for a lifetime.
On Saturday 12th December, more than 8300 photographers and volunteers in 715 locations in 42 countries gave up their time for the project. The brief is beautifully simple: find someone in need. Take their portrait. Print their portrait. And deliver it to them. That’s it. Simple to do, but as the website shows, a photograph can mean the world to someone, perhaps making a person feel special for the first time in their lives.
Help-Portrait was founded by celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart with his vision of the photography community and individuals giving back this holiday season. This event reached a magnitude that nobody saw coming.
“On December 12th, cultural borders were crossed on one side of the camera and competitive borders on the other,” reflects Cowart. “I honestly don’t know which side of the camera was blessed more. For many of our subjects across the world, Help-Portrait provided them with their first-ever family photo. However, we’re consistently hearing from many photographers worldwide that this is the greatest thing they’ve ever done with their cameras.”
It’s a lovely way for photographers to be able to share their skills - structured enough to form a template for collective action, yet open enough to let each participant stamp his or her mark on the project. Best of all, each portrait is a memento of a personal interaction between photographer and model, between someone who deserves to feel special and someone who wanted to help. You just can’t buy moments like that.
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Inspiring ideas for the future
3 billion. Thats the number of young people under twenty-five in the world - as threebillion points out, thats half the worlds population.
How can the energy and ideas of this group contribute to development? Well, Michael Boampong has some thoughts. We’ve featured Michael’s organisation, Young People We Care, previously on the vlabs blog.
Here, Michael discusses Youth-Led Development: Promoting Sustainable Development and Empowering Youth in an essay for the website Youthink!’s International Youth Day Essay Contest.
Responding to the essay question set by the World Bank, What are your tangible ideas for how youth can create effective, long-lasting change? other ideas include a TV channel by and for youth around the world, a wider look at how our attitudes can help shape our planet’s future and how obstacles like red-tape or limited finances should not young people from making a difference.
What are your ideas?
In preparation for the Y2Y Global Youth Conference 2009, the World Bank is seeking essays on Youth Entrepreneurship in times of crisis.
Get writing.
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Can international volunteering be truly accessible for all young people?
The government’s decision to give Raleigh £500,000 to support graduates “who otherwise could not afford” to volunteer abroad has had a mixed reception. While the “creative thinking” was welcomed by the NUS, some previous volunteers complained that it was “unfair” to those who had raised the full cost of the trip themselves, while others claimed that these “free gap years” could still end up costing upwards of £2,000.
Many young people are sold on the value of international volunteering. DFID research published in December 2008 showed that while 19% of the general adult population think volunteering is effective at reducing poverty overseas, that number increases to 32% in the 16-24 year old age group. But is international volunteering still the preserve of the middle classes? There are several schemes in the UK which hope to prove otherwise.
Charlotte Singleton, a volunteer youth worker from Manchester, spent 10 weeks teaching in a school in Himachal Pradesh, northern India. Her placement was fully funded by Platform 2, a global volunteering scheme for 18 to 25 year olds who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to visit a developing country, funded by the Department for International Development.
She said: “I didn’t think that people like me could do something like this. I thought it was just for people who were rich… I’d never been on an airplane before. The farthest I’d been was Wales.”
Latitude Global Volunteering offers a range of fully funded placements and bursaries for 16-25 year olds who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to volunteer.
Meanwhile, virtual volunteering opportunities allow young volunteers to help international charities from the comfort of their own homes. WorldWide Volunteering now offers virtual volunteering options, and the UN Online Volunteers Service also has opportunities for volunteers aged 18+.
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Nice piece, yourself.
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