 Thursday
at the Prepcom
Volunteering empowers youth and builds communities
New York, 14 June - Volunteers are often 'invisible' and rarely
make headlines but they contribute immensely to human development
by helping those in need, promoting self-help initiatives and taking
up worthy causes.
"Everything we have today is as a result of someone's dream,"
says Stephanie Hudson, a girl guide with the Asociación Guias/Scouts
de Costa Rica.
Stephanie, whose community service includes teaching and constructing
bridges, shared her experiences at a presentation on youth volunteerism,
hosted by the Girl Scouts and United Nations (UN) Volunteers.
The session, one of the many organized during the week-long third
Preparatory Committee meeting of the UN General Assembly's Special
Session on Children, highlighted the benefits that both the recipients
and volunteers get from youth volunteerism.
"As a volunteer, you play a role in the construction of someone's
future, helping to build a brighter future," Stephanie says.
"For me what started out as an obligation has ended up as a
passion."
Ed Doty of the Youth Service Opportunities Project emphasized
that volunteerism is embedded in every culture and includes everything
from the concept of self-help, to the "ubuntu" idea in
southern African communities, to community service.
The presenters also highlighted the vital and often unacknowledged
contribution of volunteer activities to countries' economies.
According to Yuko Osawa from UN Volunteers, volunteer activities
total up to 10 per cent of Britain's Gross Domestic Product, making
it the fourth largest contributor to the country's economy.
In Canada, volunteer activity contributes the equivalent of 578,000
full-time jobs, and in South Korea, the economic value of volunteering
is estimated at $2.182 billion. One tool the UN Volunteers has created
and is promoting during this International Year of Volunteers is
a kit to assist countries in measuring the contributions of volunteer
activities to national economies.
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