IVD is an excellent opportunity to provide the big picture of ongoing projects related to volunteerism, promote specific initiatives, and/or to launch new ones. The list contains ideas for activities that are meant to spark your interest and imagination on how to promote volunteerism in general and volunteering for development, as well as highlighting voluntary action to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Many of you have implemented these ideas successfully – thus they have proven successful in countries around the world already.  If you have additional ideas, please send them to us at info@worldvolunteerweb.org and we will include them in this list.

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Promoting the impact of volunteering

• Conduct a "time-donation" campaign by which people pledge hours of voluntary service to specific projects
• Build roads, paths, or playgrounds using donated materials and with help from volunteers
• Help companies identify corporate volunteering programmes
• Launch a national directory of volunteer organizations
• Establish a national centre or foundation to promote volunteering
• Organize a contest on composing a volunteer anthem, song or jingle
• Create an award or certificate. Mobilize a high-ranking government official or other VIP to present this to individual volunteers or volunteer organizations
• Launch a book, report, or research initiative on voluntary activities in the country
• Make a list of all the services which would not exist if it were not for volunteers
• Lobby for adoption of legislation designed to promote volunteering

Promoting the Millennium Development Goals

• Encourage national, regional or local government to adopt one or several MDGs as the main objective/s of their development strategies
• Raise awareness of civil society organizations through workshops, discussion forums, conferences, exhibitions, media,  etc. which help to highlight the importance of voluntary contributions in achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals

MDG 1  Volunteering to help eradicate poverty

• Help the needy by distributing food, clothes and medicines to the homeless and poor,  providing a meal, visiting children in orphanages, providing special care to street children
• Conduct community work, such as cleaning public spaces, planting trees etc. in a poor area of town;
• Build roads, paths, playgrounds or public recreation spaces using donated materials

MDG 2 Volunteering to achieve universal primary education

• Raise funds to sponsor primary schools or provide learning materials for students
• Organize parents and community groups and NGOs to discuss local realities, needs and innovative approaches to education

MDG 3 Volunteering to promote gender equality and empower women

• Organize and encourage education specialists to develop curricula which promotes gender equality in schools
• Organize workshops to increase awareness of teachers on lecturing students about gender equalities and educational rights

MDG 4 & 5 Volunteering to reduce child mortality  and to improve maternal health

• Mobilize midwives, gynecologists and pediatricians to provide free medical check-up and/or free vaccination for pregnant women and young children
• Mobilize health workers to educate pregnant women and mothers with young children on proper hygiene, nutrition and care of babies and young children
• Organize awareness campaigns on birth control
• Encourage the media to discuss women’s and children’s health
• Support, promote or start up a hot-line or counseling service
• Provide free medical consultations, first aid training, or raise awareness on hygiene and sanitation
• Organize a blood donation

MDG 6 Volunteering to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases

• Provide free sanitation and hygiene workshops in rural/urban poor communities
• Build latrines and/or improve sewage systems in rural/urban poor communities
• Prevent malaria by distributing mosquito nets and offering free medical consultations
• Organize discussion forums in rural areas and invite HIV/AIDS specialists to discuss the disease and HIV-infected people to talk about their plight; 
• Initiate vocational training for community health workers on how to deal with people with HIV/AIDS
• Initiate fund-raising campaigns to cover medical expenses of HIV-infected and affected people
• Mobilize volunteers to run a hotline and or counseling services for HIV/AIDS-infected and affected persons, as well as for groups with high infection-risks
• Mobilize volunteers to look after HIV/AIDS orphans

MDG 7 Volunteering for the environment - ensuring environmental sustainability

• Organize community greening initiatives for re-vegetation, tree planting, weeding, collecting and potting seedlings
• Coordinate events where people transform unused community land into vegetable gardens
• Invite environmental professionals to give hands-on lectures on healthy gardening or land use practice
• Clean up beaches, rivers, parks, nature reserves, public streets and pruning the trees
• Organize lectures on how to recycle waste, reduction of use of gasoline, electricity and water