On 23th to 25th October 2019, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV), supported by the African-German Youth Initiative (AGYI) GIZ support programme and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) co-organized a Volunteer Forum on Promoting volunteering and exchanges in Africa in the context of the Agenda 2063 (from the United Nations) and Agenda 2030 (from the African Union) in Kigali, Rwanda.
More than 75 participants coming from the Global South (Africa, Latin America, South- East Asia) discussed and interacted around the two main components of the forum:
- Inform the forward thinking for the upcoming UN Global Technical Meeting on ‘Reimagining Volunteerism for the 2030 Agenda’ as well as examining the evidence and data on volunteering (formal and informal) in Africa; reviewing contribution of volunteering to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); informing about models and different approaches to measuring volunteer work and its impact.
- Assess and validate progress on the AU Continental Volunteer Linkage Forum setting-up a volunteer knowledge sharing platform. In particular, validating proposed continental volunteer standards to establish minimum definitions for volunteerism in Africa, validating the Continental Volunteer Linkage Platform (VLP) prototype capturing the volunteering initiatives across the continent, and adopting governance mechanisms for the VLP at the national, regional and continental level. The Forum allowed the wide range of stakeholders including member states representatives, volunteer involving organizations, regional and sub-regional institutions, civil society, private sector, academia as well as volunteers and young people to network while promoting peer learning, knowledge exchange and creating partnerships.
