Monthly Archives: September 2026

An online discussion group for current & former United Nations Volunteers renewed (no official UNV affiliation).

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When I worked at UN Volunteers HQ in Bonn, Germany, directing the United Nations Online Volunteering service and co-managing the UNITeS initiative,  I would regularly recommend to any employee within earshot that UNV needed to start an online community for former and/or currently-serving UN Volunteers. I said it would be great for UN Volunteers to share their experiences, and we could use their positive feedback in a whole range of communications products. I said it might help us identify problems we were overlooking. And I warned that, if UNV didn’t start such a group, officially, that someone would start one that was unofficial, and over which UNV would have no control.

UNV never took action, and so unofficial online communities for UN Volunteers popped up on LinkedIn, Reddit, and probably some other places as well, though none ever enjoyed much popularity.

I’m pleased to note that the UNV subreddit, which was abandoned some years ago, has been revived – by me. It is not an official UNV outlet and has no formal affiliation with UNV. But like the Peace Corps subreddit and the Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) subreddit or the Girl Scouts of the USA subreddit, because it’s not official, members can speak more freely. Note that I am enforcing confidentiality and privacy rules.

If you are a current or former UNV, I hope you will join. I would really like to see more current and former UNVs post and comment than all the How do I become a UNV posts, which can kill an online community.

Until more people start posting, I’ll be trying to post at least once a week with something on-topic.

Also see my other blogs regarding UNV:

Resources from my time at United Nations Volunteers

Prepare now to leverage International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development 2026 (2025)

History & Evaluation of UNV’s Early Years

UN Volunteer requirements – but with no guidance? (2023)

Misconceptions re: VSO, UNV & Peace Corps

UNV 2023 Annual report

United Nations Volunteers says, when it comes to onsite & online, “They are ALL volunteers”

20 years ago, when everything changed for me (2020)

Thoughts on new UN paper re: Volunteering Practices in the 21st Century (2020)

United Nations site for people with disabilities is inaccessible (2019)

United Nations scales back online volunteering program (2019)

NetAid: 20 years later (2019)

UN mobilizes volunteers to research contribution of volunteerism in fragile communities and post-conflict environments (2017)

Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN (2017)

UNV announces Online Volunteering Award 2015

I’m thrilled with UNV’s 2015 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report – Transforming Governance

Initial feedback on UNV plan to integrate volunteerism in development (2014)

Suggestions for mutual aid societies in Afghanistan: acts of survival as well as resistance.

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the shadow image of a bird in a cage

Mutual aid is a voluntary, peer-to-peer exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit for people in a particular neighborhood or region. It’s sometimes called neighbors-helping-neighbors. It’s usually informal: there’s often no government agency or nonprofit organization organizing it, though that does happen. And it’s usually not some huge, well-organized network: it’s usually something done spontaneously, without careful, long-term planning.

Mutual aid activities can be focused just on helping others to obtain food and medicine, but they can also be acts of resistance: they can be focused on helping people specifically who are being marginalized or oppressed by the government or by some or even a majority of people in an area.

This resource, Suggestions for mutual aid societies in Afghanistan: acts of survival as well as resistance, reviews many different examples of successful mutual aid networks, including those that were done in response to inequities and repression and those that were done in defiance of the government or societal norms. It offers several ideas for creating grassroots mutual aid networks as a way to build solidarity with other Afghans, to survive the evils of the Taliban, and to reduce the suffering of people.

A free, detailed guide on effectively engaging & supporting volunteers.

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graphic representing volunteers at work

Where can you find a free, detailed guide on effectively engaging and supporting volunteers at a nonprofit, NGO, school, government agency, community program, etc.?

My web site.

There is an entire section of my web site devoted to various aspects of volunteer engagement: creating assignments, recruiting volunteers, recruiting specific types of volunteers, how to support volunteers (so their work is actually useful and they keep coming back), how to keep volunteers safe, how to keep everyone else safe when they’re around volunteers, and on and on.

There’s information about volunteers from the corporate world, group volunteering, tech-related volunteering and volunteers who are immigrants. There’s even information about groups who actively campaign against volunteering and volunteerism.

And the information on these pages aren’t just from me: I also link to web sites, blogs and books by other people, each an expert in at least some aspect of volunteer engagement or a related subject, each worth listening to.

Why give it away for free? Why not put it all into a book? Because that’s how passionate I am about volunteerism, about wanting to dispel myths and harmful traditions, about wanting what makes volunteer engagement worthwhile and what makes it effective to be far better known.

That isn’t to say there aren’t good books out there about volunteer engagement, and that you shouldn’t read them. And if you want to know where to find the books I recommend, this section of my web site will help.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.