International Association for Volunteer Effort

Network DevelopmentIAVE brings together national leaders of volunteering through its Global Network for Volunteering Leadership (GNVL) and leaders of volunteering in major global corporations through its Global Corporate Volunteer Council.In 2020, IAVE launched its first-of-its-kind Global Network for Volunteering Leadership (GNVL) to bring together organizations providing leadership for volunteering in their countries. Since then, the network has grown to include 98 organizations from 81 countries, across Africa, the Arab Nations, Asia-Pacific, North America and the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. The second cohort of IAVEs Leadership Mentoring Program began its work in 2022. The program is a resource for members of GNVL to build confidence and to support individuals in their work and professional development. Five mentee/mentor pairs were matched for a mutual mentoring process, where mentors also gain new skills and knowledge, and building strong relationships with peer colleagues from throughout their regions and the world. The Global Corporate Volunteer Council (GCVC) brings together those within major global companies who are responsible for their companys employee volunteer programs. In 2022, GCVC members met in Abu Dhabi just prior to the World Volunteer Conference there. Twenty representatives from 12 companies participated in a two-day professional development and information sharing program. In 2022, the total GCVC membership was 34 companies which, together, have operations in every region of the world, annually engaging thousands of employees in volunteer activities in their communities.IAVE currently has over 400 members and over 3,400 Global Friends of Volunteering from 167 countries across every region of the world. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, IAVE has engaged with them through ongoing online events. In 2022, these were the Lets Talk Volunteering webinar series and the Leadership for Volunteering webinar series.From January to April 2022, IAVE hosted a three-part webinar series titled Lets Talk Volunteering.Each session explored future volunteering issues and trends, focused on findings from recent global and regional research reports.The first session in the series explored global trends in volunteering, bringing together three key global research that has been published in 2021 - IAVEs Leadership for Volunteering: the COVID-19 Experience; Forums COVID-19 and the Future of Volunteering for Development; and UNVs State of the Worlds Volunteerism Report 2022: Building Equal and Inclusive Societies. IAVE also commissioned an academic Dr Alice Chadwick El-Ali to consider the three pieces of research and provide a paper on the synergies and emerging trends. This paper has been widely commented on as very useful in building both knowledge and our understanding of what global volunteering research is indicating for the future.The widespread interest in the first session led to the organization of two more Lets TalkVolunteering sessions looking at recent research from Asia Pacific and Europe.From May to September 2022, IAVE hosted a webinar series Leadership for Volunteering:Reflecting on the COVID-19 Experience. The 3-part series focused on the Briefing Papers from the IAVE research Leadership for Volunteering: the COVID-19 Response. The topics covered were Volunteering and Disaster Preparedness, Partnership and Collaboration for Volunteering and Creating an Enabling Environment for Volunteering.

Knowledge DevelopmentIn June 2022, IAVE released Corporate Volunteering for a Post-Pandemic World, the report on 2+ years of research that included over 200 interviews with representatives of 35 companies headquartered in 120 different countries representing every region of the world. Also interviewed were leaders of nongovernmental organizations, leaders of volunteering, academics and consultants working with companies to develop and implement volunteer programs. The research has received significant visibility and has underscored the importance of IAVEs unique ability to conduct global research.In celebration of International Volunteer Day in December 2022, IAVE kicked off its webinar series on Decolonizing and Repositioning Volunteering with an initial focus on volunteering and development in Africa.

ConveningIAVE held its 26th biennial World Volunteer Conference in Abu Dhabi, in partnership with the Emirates Foundation, October 24-27, 2022. There were 815 participants from 94 countries and 110 speaker and moderators. Immediately preceding the World Conference, IAVE held its second Global Network for Volunteer Leadership (GNVL) Summit with participants from 87 countries. This was the first World Conference held since 2018 as the 2020 conference was cancelled due to the COVID shutdown.In September 2022, IAVE collaborated with Good Deeds Day on a Latin America regional conference in Mexico City, bringing together sixty leaders of volunteering from throughout the region to discuss and prepare for future programming in response to the changing needs and priorities in their countries.