{"id":245,"date":"2011-10-20T15:20:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T15:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyoteblog.posterous.com\/international-volunteer-day-for-economic-soci"},"modified":"2020-07-06T16:55:16","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T23:55:16","slug":"international-volunteer-day-for-economic-soci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2011\/10\/international-volunteer-day-for-economic-soci\/","title":{"rendered":"International Volunteer Day for Economic &#038; Social Development &#8211; Dec. 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not too early to start planning for how your organization will leverage December 5, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/en\/events\/volunteerday\/\">International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development<\/a>. <strong>This isn&#8217;t 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> &#8212; meaning it&#8217;s a global event &#8212; not the volunteer.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a shame to turn the day into just another day to celebrate any volunteer, rather than <strong>specifically those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development<\/strong>. <strong>Such volunteers deserve their own day<\/strong>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.energizeinc.com\/prof\/events\/eventsworld.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">There are <em>plenty<\/em> of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering<\/a>; why not <strong>keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development<\/strong>? Why not keep it unique?<\/p>\n<p>Even if you are in a &#8220;developed&#8221; country &#8211; the USA, Canada, Norway, France, whatever &#8211; you have volunteers that are engaged in economic and social development. Here in the USA, there are volunteers staffing financial literacy classes for low-income populations, training unemployed people to enter or re-enter the workforce, helping refugees and new immigrants access much-needed resources and services, training seniors to use computers and the Internet, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/development\/finalpaper.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">using theater, dance and other performance as an education and awareness tool<\/a>, and so much more. <strong>Those are all examples of volunteering for economic and social development! <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And in addition to keeping this day special, let&#8217;s also be careful of how we talk about volunteers. For instance, back in 2009, I got this note in a mass email sent out from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unvolunteers.org\/\">United Nations Volunteers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"posterous_short_quote\"><p>This is the time to recognize the hard work and achievements of volunteers everywhere who work selflessly for the greater good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Selflessly?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Volunteers are not all <em>selfless<\/em>!<\/strong> Volunteers are not all donating unpaid service to be nice, to help the world, or to make a difference for a greater good. Volunteers also donate unpaid service:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>to gain certain kinds of experience<\/li>\n<li>for a sense of adventure<\/li>\n<li>to gain skills and contacts for paid employment<\/li>\n<li>for fun<\/li>\n<li>to meet people in the hopes of making friends or even get dates<\/li>\n<li>because they are angry and want to see first hand what&#8217;s going on at an organization or within a cause, or to contribute to a cause they feel passionate about<\/li>\n<li>to feel important<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>None of those reasons to volunteer are selfless<\/strong> &#8212; and all of them are <em>excellent<\/em> reasons to volunteer, nonetheless (and excellent reasons for an organization to involve a volunteer). <strong>These not-so-selfless volunteers are not less committed, less trustworthy or less worth celebrating than the supposed &#8220;selfless&#8221; volunteers. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Please &#8211; no more warm, fuzzy language regarding volunteers! Let&#8217;s quit talking about volunteers with words like <em>nice<\/em> and <em>selfless<\/em>. Volunteers are neither saints nor teddy bears. Let&#8217;s <strong>start using more modern and appropriate language to talk about volunteers that recognizes their importance<\/strong>, like <em>powerful<\/em> and <em>intrepid<\/em> and <em>audacious<\/em> and <em>determined<\/em>. Let&#8217;s even call them <em>mettlesome<\/em> and <em>confrontational<\/em> and <em>demanding<\/em>. That&#8217;s what makes volunteers <em>necessary<\/em>, not just <em>nice<\/em>. Let&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/value.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">increase the value of volunteers with the language we use<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In short, <strong>let&#8217;s give volunteers their due with the words we use to describe them<\/strong>.<\/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, and his or her &#8220;stipend&#8221; that&#8217;s supposed to merely cover essential expenses so the volunteer can give up employment entirely during his or her stint as a volunteer isn&#8217;t in fact more than some mid and high-level government workers of a country are making. Yes, that&#8217;s a dig.<\/p>\n<p>International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development was declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/ga\/search\/view_doc.asp?symbol=A\/RES\/40\/212\">40\/212<\/a><\/span> in 1985.<\/p>\n<p>Also see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.merrillassociates.com\/topic\/2004\/12\/learning-not-so-nice-volunteers\">Learning From The \u201cNot-So-Nice\u201d Volunteers<\/a>, which I wrote back in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/asavol.html\">how I volunteer<\/a> (no stipends yet!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s not too early to start planning for how your organization will leverage December 5, International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development. This isn&#8217;t a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title descr&#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":[150,163,216,265,272,276,512,523,529,530,532],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-development","tag-economic","tag-global","tag-international","tag-ivd","tag-language","tag-unitednations","tag-value","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering","tag-volunteers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-3X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","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=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5634,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/5634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}