Launched by the Millennium Campaign, STAND UP is a global advocacy effort to set an official Guinness World Record - the greatest number of people ever to STAND UP Against Poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals - on October 15-16 2006.   Read article

Corporate employee volunteering might be booming — more corporations and charities are trying to work together. Trouble is, the two sides don't seem to understand each other and, in some cases, they just don't get on. A special report has found frustrations and recriminations spilling over from both sectors.  Read article

Haifa, Israel: Hundreds of volunteers have been steadily streaming towards north of Jerusalem since the daily shelling between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah group started two weeks ago. Volunteers are leaving their jobs, studies and families to help beleaguered residents of Nahariya, Safed and Kiryat Shmona.  Read article

Canberra, Australia: Australian Prime Minister John Howard is considering a plan to pay retired volunteers for their efforts and to give tax breaks to volunteers still in the workforce. Under the proposed plan, volunteers in employment would be entitled to a personal income-tax deduction for the out-of-pocket expenses incurred in their volunteering. Elderly volunteers on limited incomes and those who were pensioners should be considered for some direct monetary return for their efforts.   Read article

We are proud to announce that the World Volunteer Web has won this year’s Web4Dev Award for excellence in website design and development. The Web4Dev Award for 2006 is sponsored by the World Bank and was presented on 21 June at a ceremony in Washington D.C.  Read article

We regularly publish articles that illustrate volunteers’ impact - individually and collectively. But a recent research showed that some volunteers don’t value their experiences. A study done by UK’s Chartered Management Institute and the international volunteer-sending organization VSO, reveal that some individuals fail to capitalize on their volunteering experiences.

What does your volunteer experience teach you? How do you apply the skills you’ve learned during volunteering in your normal, everyday work and life? Did volunteering make a difference? Tell us here!

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The word ‘volunteer’ is rarely appreciated or even understood by many Yemenis. Observers believe the current environment in Yemen does not encourage volunteerism due to high unemployment, extreme poverty and lack of basic services.  Read article

Bangkok, Thailand: Thailand has assigned 900,000 volunteers to perform house-to-house checks for signs of the deadly avian influenza virus, Health Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul said Monday. The volunteer programme, which also involves bringing possibly infected subjects to nearby hospitals, is similar to a campaign launched in 2004.   Read article

Balakot, Pakistan: There's no way to measure how much the volunteers have accomplished writes Tim Sulliven of The Associated Press. Even if the volunteers are unorganized or lack training, they have dug out dozens, and probably hundreds, of bodies. They've brought food and clothing to people who need it. Perhaps most importantly, they are proof to the residents of Balakot that people do care.  Read article