Report of the Conferences and
the campaign on volunteering and ICTs
Chairperson,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the World Summit on the
Information Society Volunteer Family, I am honored to speak
before this prominent assembly in order to, on one hand,
provide a synthesis of the various reports of workshops and
conferences of the WSIS Volunteer Family between 2004 and
2005, and, on the other hand, some thoughts regarding our
participation in the process.
Since 2002, the volunteer sector has had
the occasion, thanks to the multi-stakeholder approach of
this Summit, to actively contribute to it, mainly by
participating in the elaboration of its texts, by mobilizing
volunteers and by developing projects linked to volunteering
and the information society.
I would like to recall here, that
volunteers, if all put into one nation, would represent the
5th most powerful economy of the world. However, volunteers
often operate in the shade and are generally little
represented in important decision-making processes.
As recognized during the first phase of
the WSIS, I would also like to recall that volunteers have
actively participated in the creation of what we call today
the information society. They wrote some of the first
Internet protocols, are at the origin of many application of
open source and free software and, last but not least,
participate as trainers and disseminators of information for
a society of shared knowledge characterized by
inclusiveness, solidarity and consensus, which we are
building. Volunteers also contribute to cultural and
linguistic diversity in cyberspace.
If the WSIS Volunteer Family has been
very happy to be fully associated in this multi-stakeholder
process of the Summit, we have, at a number of occasions,
seen that volunteering is not understood well enough and
supported by governments and other actors of the
international arena. We wish therefore to see a better
understanding of a sector which has a significant impact on
social and human development in this world, in general, and
in the information society, in particular, for
implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.
This is why we acknowledge with regret
that, if the approach of volunteerism has been included in
the first phase of the Summit, this approach has been
omitted in the Tunis document regarding implementation.
We are proud that, even with modest
means, we have managed to implement a certain number of
national campaigns on volunteering and ICTs between 2004 and
2005. We believe that these examples and the projects
launched as a continuation of a number of local, regional
and international consultations and conferences on this
topic allowed to build solid foundations for beyond the
Tunis Summit.
Finally, we would like to underline that
volunteers are connectors between local and global. Let us
recall the enormous success of the International Year of
Volunteers (IYV 2001), which is a good illustration of the
tremendous impact of volunteers. Since volunteers are
innovators, they can bring forward a humble contribution to
the international community in the search for solutions to
the essential questions related to the use of ICTs, for
example through the development of South-South and
South-North volunteer programs or initiatives of online
volunteering.
Mister President, Excellencies, Honorable
Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
In conclusion, we wish that our potential
of mobilization be fully used and our experience and
professionalism put to profit to as many as possible. We
need little to achieve a lot. We wish to continue working
closely with the various actors associated to this Summit,
in the framework of multi-stakeholder partnerships, in
particular with governments, civil society, the private
sector, to implement the objectives outlined in the Summit
documents.
Thank you for your attention.
Message prepared by ICVolunteers,
Cibervoluntarios.es, Azur Développement, ICVolontaires-Mali,
United Nations of Youth (UNOY) Network Nigeria, and
presented by Viola Krebs, Secretary-General of ICVolunteers
on 18th November 2005 in plenary of the Summit on
the Information Society
|