VOLUNTARY

VOLUNTARY INITIATIVES IN RUSSIA

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

Dear Colleague,

A series of voluntary and community-based activities around the theme of “Creating our future together” will take place across Russia during 2005.

Activities include:

q Global Youth Service Days (GYSD), 15 – 17 April

q Russian Youth Service Day (RYSD), 16 April

q The Spring Week of Action (SWA), 16 – 23 April

q The International Day of Volunteers for Economic and Social Development (IDV), 5 December.

The aim of these voluntary initiatives around the country is to assist and strengthen civil society; and empower individuals, NGOs, government and commercial organizations to work together in solving important social problems for the benefit of Russian society.

This year there is a special focus on:

q supporting young people in volunteering

q recognizing and promoting the role of volunteers, and their contribution to the social and economic development of the Russian Federation

q working towards achievement of the Millennium Goals endorsed by world leaders at the UN’s Millennium Summit in 2000, which include poverty reduction.

Voluntary activities will be developed on a regional basis across the country. The specific form and content of local events will reflect the particular needs and concerns of each region, community or organization.

These initiatives will produce a large number of socially useful projects around the country, bringing together individuals and organizations on a voluntary basis on the days of action to:

build capacity in microrayons; plant trees; clean up school grounds, public squares and parks; give lessons on voluntary work; organise seminars, forums, charity concerts and plays; collect books and toys as well as money; and help old people, disabled people and those living on their own

A report on all these voluntary activities will be made public on the International Day of Volunteers in December.

Overall co-ordination of the country-wide voluntary activities will be handled by the Russian National Coordinating Committee (NCC). This consists of representatives from NGOs, government, commercial and international organizations. Its brief is to coordinate and support activities at regional, inter-regional and national levels.

For further information, or to join in these events, please contact the Co-ordinators for Voluntary Activities in Russia, 2005:

Galina Bodrenkova, Russian Centre for the Development of Volunteering, International Association of Voluntary Work

Elena Zakharova, Sozidanie Fund, International Association for National Youth Service

Tel / fax: (095) 291-1473, 291-2004; sozidanie@co.ru ; gbodrenkova@yandex.ru

Postal address: 119019 Moscow, a/я 126 (for Sozidanie)

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

In April 2004, 292 towns and communities took part in the Spring Week of Action and Global Youth Service Day, also based on the idea of “Creating our future together”. Over 340,000 Russian volunteers (87% of them young people) from more than 2,000 organisations and 979 academic establishments worked on 3,219 socially beneficial projects for a total of 1.3 million hours in just one week, with an equivalent value of US$ 1.3 million (calculated on the average national wage of US$ 1 per hour). Over the past five years (2000-2004) the contribution of volunteers and their activities in social spheres can be calculated as an investment of over US$ 3 million!

These data clearly illustrate the significant role and contribution of volunteers (of all ages) and of civil society institutions to the socio-economic development of our country, to resolving the problems of poverty, HIV/AIDS, ecological sustainability and numerous other social problems.

However, according to unofficial sources, only about 1.5 – 2% of skilled people do voluntary work in Russia (compared with 10 – 50% in economically developed countries). Studies by the National Centre for Social Research in 1999 and 2003 show that over 40% of Russians would like to be involved in socially-beneficial voluntary work. If the conditions existed to encourage just 10% of the Russian population to engage in voluntary work, this would yield an annual investment equivalent to US$ 3 billion.

The contemporary relevance of volunteering is recognized in Russia and in the wider world, as enshrined in UN resolutions (A/RES/56/38 and A/57/L8 of 2002, for example). The UN strongly commends volunteerism to governments of the world formulating their national plans and strategies, as a necessary component of achieving sustainable development, poverty reduction, and in overcoming social inequality and discrimination.

Voluntary initiatives across Russia are annual social and educational campaigns, part of international strategy to promote volunteering and constructive opportunities of development for young people. They aim to build civil creative capacity, by developing mechanisms of effective partnership between government authorities, civil society institutions and business organizations while tackling social problems.

The Spring Week of Action, like the Russian Week of Volunteers, has been held in the third or fourth week of April since 1997 to encourage people of all ages, especially young people, to take part in social and ecological voluntary work. Other aims are to draw public attention to urgent social needs, and create an organizational and legal infrastructure in Russia to support voluntary activity.

Global Youth Service Day is a larger-scale international youth event, held in Russia and the wider world since 2000 to highlight the importance of young people as a resource in social development. Taking its cue from GYSD, Russian Youth Service Day has since 2001 had as its focus the establishment and development of a National Youth Service and the introduction into Russian schools of innovative methods of “Teaching through service”.

The International Day of Volunteers for Economic and Social Development was established by the United Nations in 1985 and is marked in UN member-countries, in recognition of volunteering as a basic building block of civil society. In Russia, public organizations have celebrated IDV annually since 1995.

You can find more information about volunteering and voluntary work on these websites:

http://www.gysd.net; http://www.worldvolunteerweb.org;

http://www.takingitglobal.ru; http://www.fondsozidanie.ru

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