Famille des Volontaires du SMSI
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Declaration Needs Human Face
Brian Thomson Participants at the "Conference on Volunteering and ICTs"say they would have liked more of their demands included in the summit's proposed declaration and action plan.
"In terms of the language in the plan of action and declaration, well - we would have liked to see more of the human and social side of things in those," said Viola Krebs, director of International Conference Volunteers. "Getting language into those documents hasn't been easy."
While keen to play its part in promoting ICTs for development, the volunteer sector also wants to call for a WSIS "reality-check".
"It's very easy to come up with goals saying that every village on this planet must be connected to the Internet by 2015. But how realistic is that if you look at the poorest places on this earth, such as Mali," asks Krebs. "You first need to know how to read to benefit from these types of technology."
UN statistics show that in 2001, only one person in 160 had access to the internet in Africa - which has a population of 816 million. And, only one in 40 was fortunate enough to have a fixed telephone line.
Despite her misgivings, Krebs believes the summit process has still been something of a catalyst in the volunteer community, bringing it closer together.
The Conference on Volunteering and ICTs, run as a WSIS side event, has been keen to stress that volunteers have played and continue to play an important role in the development and use of ICTs. More importantly, they have also taken a lead in training people to meet the demands of the information society. The needs here are massive, ranging from basic technological literacy to creating applications across the entire development spectrum.
"Because volunteers do a lot of work at grass roots level, they actually make a difference - they train trainers and they particularly focus on marginalised groups who otherwise don't get access to this type of training," said Krebs, who is also the organiser of the Conference on Volunteering.
In addtion, the event has served to highlight how ICTs can be used in the volunteering field, through the further development of such things as e-volunteers.
OneWorld, a civil society network, told delegates that it had stepped up its programme of using volunteer editors who work on-line. "So far we have 35 volunteer editors and we hope to increase that to 50 by next year," said project manager Bill Grunyon. "This is a very effective way of involving people in the South to explain the issues to people in the North, where most of our readers are located."
The volunteer sector also wants to step up cooperation with business, recognising the need for improvement in this field.
"Too often the private sector sees volunteering as a way for them to look good. There needs to be more of a shared interest - that's how partnerships work," noted Krebs.