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Statement presented to the Governmental Plenary of the World Summit on the Information Society

11 December 2003 — On behalf of the WSIS Volunteer Family, I thank you for the opportunity to make a brief statement to this General Debate of the World Summit on the Information Society.

Let me begin by presenting some facts about Volunteering and the Information Society:

Volunteering is one of the clearest expressions of solidarity in action. It is a global fact of life, a mass social phenomenon involving hundreds of millions of people around the world. Ten million people volunteered in 2000 to vaccinate 550 million children as part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The total value of this support was estimated at ten billion US dollars. A study from ATD Fourth World reports that in countries where empirical studies exist, the contribution of volunteering is estimated to be between 8 and 14% of GDP.

The Information Society is no exception. The development of some of its key elements is to a great extent a product of volunteer effort. Well-known examples are Open Source Software, Internet protocols, and the Web itself. Volunteers continue to drive social applications of ICT, like community networks.

Volunteers are helping to reduce the digital divide, both within and between countries, through human capacity building, literacy programmes, and computer recycling.

Volunteers and the volunteer sector around the world are already making use of ICT for purposes of information sharing, data management, promotion, volunteer management, fund raising and networking. Electronic networking was a key factor in the outstanding success of the International Year of Volunteers 2001.

Through ICT, volunteering is developing in new directions, like Online Volunteering. ICT is also opening up attractive new opportunities for involvement, especially for young people.

It has already been acknowledged by the UN and governments around the world that the MDGs will not be achieved without massive involvement of the world's citizens as volunteers. One of the stated goals of this Summit is to devise ways in which ICT can be applied to help reach these Goals. If we strengthen the connection between Volunteering and ICT we will all have a powerful asset towards the attainment of those Goals.

We thus suggest that in order to truly understand and characterize the Information Society, and in particular to truly bring about a more fair and inclusive Information Society, the role of Volunteering should be recognized, promoted and included in this new social paradigm. General Assembly resolution A/57/L.8, after the International Year of Volunteers 2001, recognized the contribution of Volunteering to economic and social development, and urged governments to support and invest in volunteer action.

This World Summit on the Information Society is an opportunity to put ICT Volunteering on the development map. This has policy implications; it will need alliances and partnerships between governments, private sector, academia, and the elements of civil society, including the volunteer sector. We invite your support and cooperation.

Tomorrow, a volunteer plan of action will be presented by one of my colleagues from the Volunteer Family. The plan is designed to do two things: (1) to strengthen the contributions of Volunteering to the progress of the Information Society, and (2) to improve the way that volunteers and volunteer organizations make use of these technologies.

Volunteers actively embody a value, which I assume we´d all include in our common vision of the Information Society. That value is solidarity. Volunteers are agents of solidarity all over the world, in the South and in the North, working for a more fair and inclusive Information Society. I urge you to give full recognition to the value and role of volunteering in your deliberations and the follow up to this Summit.

Thank you.

Liz Burns, President of IAVE

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