by Andrew Firmin, Acting Research Manager, CIVICUS
International Volunteer Day, and the culmination of the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers, offers an opportunity to emphasise the important role of volunteerism in civic life.
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation believes that voluntary citizen participation is an essential part of civil society, which in turn is a key contributor to sustainable development, human rights, good governance and social justice. Volunteering in civil society organisations is a crucial way in which the effectiveness, capacity and governance of CSOs is enhanced and in which the voice of citizens can be heard in public life. CIVICUS, as part of its mandate to promote and strengthen civil society, undertakes research and analysis into the nature and role of volunteerism, and has a range of resources available to better inform approaches to volunteering, detailed after the break.
CIVICUS encourages policy-makers, donors and others involved in civil society to see volunteerism as a valuable part of a spectrum of participation and activism, and to understand that people volunteer for a diversity of reasons, in a range of ways and in service of a variety of goals. It also encourages a broad understanding of what constitutes voluntary action, from formal voluntary roles in various kinds of organisations, to less formally constituted service for the community, and from online volunteering to individual moments of activism.
CIVICUS’ Civil Society Index (CSI), a three year research project which gathered the views of many thousands of people on the current state of civil society, found that most CSOs depend on volunteer workers for their existence. But it also found that most associational life, and most voluntary action, takes place outside formal organisations, often in community structures, or in villages, with close friends and family, within identity groups and religious affiliations. The conclusions of the CSI project, summarised in CIVICUS’ 2011 report Bridging the Gaps, is that more emphasis needs to be made on connecting organised civil society with less formalised groupings and individuals, and that the multiple sources of and motivations for participation need to be understood, so that people can be better supported to participate more intensely and more deeply, such that participation in its various forms can contribute more significantly towards social and political change.
Since the CSI project was concluded, there has been a new upsurge in voluntary advocacy action. CIVICUS Director of Outreach Henri Valot comments, “2011 has been a year in which people’s voluntary action has changed the landscape and challenged the dynamics of power. In North Africa governments have fallen, and elsewhere valuable concessions have been extracted from states as a result of people giving their time, resources and expertise, going onto the streets and mobilising online. The Occupy movement has caught the imagination in its global search for alternative societal structure, protests and civic engagement, such as in Iceland, across Europe have modelled new forms of democracy.”
These are just a few of the new movements based on voluntary action that have challenged conventional ways of doing politics and traditional ways of organising civil society in 2011, which will be detailed in CIVICUS’ first ever annual State of Civil Society report, released early 2012.
CIVICUS is also working with United Nations Volunteers (UNV) to document ways in which different forms of volunteering strengthened activism and civil society in 2011, to be published in late December. It has also analysed volunteering patterns in CSOs in Africa.
CIVICUS’ current work on volunteering builds on its 2008 study with UNV and the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) which explored volunteerism’s relationship with participatory governance. The study concluded that supporting volunteerism would increase the level and diversity of participation to improve our ability to confront the pressing issues of the day.
Based on its analysis, CIVICUS’ key recommendations to policy makers to support more effective volunteerism are:
- ensure policy frameworks and legislation are in place to promote and protect civil society and formalise space for both formal and non-formal voluntary action;
- make certain civil society has a full stakeholder role, and that participatory governance methodologies are fully adopted, including in post-crisis settings, at all levels of government;
- support the delivery of civic education and capacity building for active citizenship through both civil society and public education channels;
- assist dissemination of information about opportunities for participation in participatory governance processes, and through CSOs and non-formal volunteerism so that citizens are properly informed;
- support volunteerism award and recognition programmes.
