{"id":212,"date":"2011-11-29T16:48:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T16:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyoteblog.posterous.com\/dec-5-international-volunteer-day-for-economi"},"modified":"2017-05-04T17:19:40","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T00:19:40","slug":"dec5volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2011\/11\/dec5volunteers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dec. 5: International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/globalvolunteering.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3055\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/globalvolunteering.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"227\" \/><\/a>December 5 is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/events\/volunteerday\/\">International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development<\/a>, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution <a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/ga\/search\/view_doc.asp?symbol=A\/RES\/40\/212\">40\/212<\/a> in 1985.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This is not a day to honor only <em>international<\/em> volunteers<\/strong>; the <em>international<\/em> in the title describes the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em>day<\/em><\/span>, not the volunteer. It&#8217;s a day <strong>to honor, specifically, those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development<\/strong>. <strong>Such volunteers deserve their own day<\/strong>. Such volunteers are part of the reason <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.forumer.com\/jcravens\/&amp;thisy=2009&amp;thism=11&amp;thisd=30\">I bristle at all the warm and fuzzy language used about volunteers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What does it mean &#8211; <strong>volunteers contributing to economic and social development<\/strong>? It means volunteers who help create and support activities that help:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>poor or economically at-risk people access microfinance programs or get out of debt or better manage their money<\/li>\n<li>poor or economically at-risk people become successful farmers<\/li>\n<li>people use sustainable animal husbandry practices<\/li>\n<li>women learn to read and learn skills<\/li>\n<li>people understand how to protect their local environment while still making a living for themselves<\/li>\n<li>create understanding, acceptance and support of people with disabilities in all aspects of society, including paid work<\/li>\n<li>develop environmentally-appropriate and historically-respectful tourism that helps local economies<\/li>\n<li>train local restauranteurs in developing countries to become more sustainable and more attractive to a wider clientele<\/li>\n<li>create and support schools<\/li>\n<li>celebrate the arts and bring access to theater, dance, song, paintings, sculpture or other arts to any group or community<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/development\/finalpaper.html\" target=\"_blank\">use the arts to educate about any economic or social issue<\/a><\/li>\n<li>contribute in some way to any of the Millennium Development Goals<\/li>\n<li>give children and teens alternatives to negative\/destructive activities<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and on and on.<\/p>\n<p>Cultural organizations, vocational programs, education programs, girls-empowerment programs, anti-violence programs, agricultural programs, schools &#8211; all of these and more contribute to economic and social development, even if they don&#8217;t say so in their mission statements. <strong>And if these organizations involve volunteers, then their volunteers also contribute to economic and social development.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How are you going to leverage the International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Will you blog about what your volunteers are doing to help your local communities economic health or social cohesion\/inter-cultural understanding or community health, showing that your volunteers aren&#8217;t just nice and good-hearted, but filling essential roles and being the best for those roles?<\/li>\n<li>Will you create a message on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vimeo\" target=\"_blank\">Vimeo<\/a> addressing your volunteers specifically, but sharing it with everyone, talking about how volunteers contribute to economic and social development?<\/li>\n<li>Will you write a letter to your local newspaper to be published on December 5 and talking about how volunteers contribute to economic and social development in your community?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don&#8217;t make this\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.forumer.com\/jcravens\/&amp;thisy=2009&amp;thism=11&amp;thisd=30\">hug-a-volunteer-day<\/a>. Don&#8217;t turn the day into just another day to celebrate volunteering in general &#8212; there are plenty of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering; <strong>keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development<\/strong>, per its original intention, and, therefore, keep it unique and interesting and something worth paying attention to!<\/p>\n<p>And just to be clear: by <em>volunteer<\/em>, I mean someone who is <em>not<\/em> paid for his or her service, or, if he or she has a &#8220;stipend&#8221;, it covers only very essential expenses so the volunteer can give up employment <em>entirely<\/em> during his or her stint as a volunteer, rather than the stipend being as much, if not more, than some mid and high-level government workers of a country are making. Yes, that&#8217;s a dig at a certain organization.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/asavol.html\">how I volunteer<\/a> &#8211; and economic and social development is actually a primary motivation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 5 is International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40\/212 in 1985. This is not a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[23,78,672,807,255,272,675,673,372,1651,398,529,530],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-abroad","tag-celebration","tag-economic-development","tag-inclusion","tag-income","tag-ivd","tag-jobs","tag-livelihoods","tag-poverty","tag-prosperity","tag-recognition","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-3q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3057,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/3057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}