29 November 2007

Delhi, India: The Voluntary Action Cell at the Planning Commission of the Government of India (GoI) has developed the first “National Policy on the Voluntary Sector” in May 2007. This document is presented as a “policy to encourage, enable and empower an independent, creative and effective voluntary sector”.

This policy contains many important statements, which are worthy to further develop, to follow-up and to translate in reality. This text provides an excellent basis for a multi-stakeholder dialogue aiming to achieve the adoption of a policy and legislation to support volunteerism in India in the long run. It also participates to encourage and inspire citizens to volunteer, and to improve volunteers’ recognition and validation.

UNV India suggests bridge the government and volunteer organizations during IVD in organizing/facilitating a one-day consultative workshop between GoI and VOs on this policy. The objectives of this day would be to make the policy and the intentions of GoI related to it known to VOs, to gather together stakeholders which are not used to sit together, to exchange respective views on the policy, and to establish an action plan and a task force to finalize the policy and make it accepted by the different stakeholders, ready for final validation at government level. Working on the policy level is part of UNV India strategy to institutionalize volunteerism and to work on a sustainable manner.

During this workshop, the UNV draft on “Volunteerism in India” will also be distributed to the participants, who would be requested to further develop it with UNV during the following months, in order to have a common understanding of volunteerism in India and a common document to advocate for volunteerism for development.

UNV India is inviting a number of government and volunteer organizations representatives to extensively discuss some articles of the policy and to make some very concrete steps.

UNV India then needs to develop concrete actions which can make a real difference: organizing a working session on a policy for the International Volunteer Day, at the place of a more “festive” event, participates to this objective.