27 November 2002

December 5, 2002, will see plenty of activities introducing and popularizing the International Volunteer Day all over Colombia. IYV was created by United Nations Resolution 52/17, on November 20, 1997, proclaiming year 2001 as "International Year of the Volunteer". Over the next two years, the Colombian National Committee of the IYV was formed.

The objectives of this committee were to strengthen Colombian volunteer service, establish volunteer work in the public eye as the expression of the exercise of solidarity and participation of the people, and to achieve recognition, by the State and the different strata of civil society, for the contribution that volunteers make towards building the country in a peaceful environment. It has since been three years of hard work in which innumerable obstacles have had to be surmounted, but also in which an important number of successes, qualitative and quantitative, have been achieved.

It is not too unfamiliar to hear about volunteer activities in Colombia for it has been gradually gaining its position in the field of national development over the past years. The adoption of law 720 of 2001 of the Colombian Volunteer is an official acknowledgement of the role and significance of volunteer work in this nation. It also serves as an impetus for further development of such activities in the near future.

The hub of activities in honor of the International Volunteer Day will be a tele-conference held by the National Committee of IYV, together with support from the Sustainable Development Network, UNDP and the UNV Programme in Colombia. The theme of the conference is "Management of Co-existence: an option for the volunteers of nation-building". The purpose is to offer an opportunity to learn about the role of voluntary service in the building of national co-existence and to reinforce the participation of the regions through the utilization of technological advances in communications. This will depend highly on the technical and logistical support of the Sustainable Development Network and on the financial and organizational support, amongst others, of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and of the UNV Program in Colombia. This new activity of intensive coverage, slated for December 5th between 8:00 and 10:30a.m (local time), will interconnect the national committee of the International Year of the Volunteer/2001 (Bogota-Colombia); Red Cross, Atlantic Section (Cartagena de Indias - Colombia);CEDECUR (Cali, Colombia); Program of United Nations Volunteers (Bonn, Germany); Group Scouts Oficina Mundial (Geneva-Switzerland) and IAVE Mundial (Tilliconltry, Scotland). It is expected to attract approximately 150-200 volunteers from each Colombian city joining discussions with several high-ranking officials from international organizations. The local committees of volunteers will make appearances to present their papers as volunteers from within the management of the co-existence for the building of the country.

It is hoped that this year's International Day of Volunteer in Colombia will not only be an opportunity for volunteers to celebrate an occasion to heighten awareness of the important contributions of volunteer service, thereby calling to action individuals and associations in Colombia, but also a time to assess achievements that have been made thus far and from which future lessons could be learned.

Many thanks to Rosa Maria Gomez, UNV promoter in Colombia and to Linda Were for translating original documents leading to this article.</block>