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Convening

CREATING THE MOMENT AND STIMULATING DIALOGUE

Photo: 2018 Global Youth Volunteering Forum, Augsburg, Germany

We bring together diverse groups of leaders of volunteering in settings that encourage discussion, reflection and learning. Participants are invited to focus on specific issues challenging volunteering and on how to increase the impact of volunteering on the world’s most pressing problems. IAVE’s convenings include biennial World Volunteer Conferences and Regional Volunteer Conferences, as well as Special Interest Convenings to focus attention on issues of significant interest to target audiences.

World Volunteer Conference

IAVE was born from the vision of our founders that volunteers from throughout the world could come together to share their experiences, to learn from one another and to build bridges across cultural, political and linguistic barriers. Since IAVE’s inception in 1970, we have convened a total of 25 times for our biennial World Volunteer Conferences. The structure of the conferences includes plenaries with challenging and inspiring speakers; forums that dig deep into challenging issues confronting the field; workshops that are designed to present new ideas, expose highly effective practices and stimulate participant dialogue; and, ample time to meet informally and to learn about the host country.

List of World Volunteer Conferences

  • 1st IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Los Angeles, USA (1970)
  • 2nd IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Manila, Philippines (1972 )
  • 3rd IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Nairobi, Kenya (1974)
  • 4th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – San Francisco, United States (1976)
  • 5th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Istanbul, Turkey (1978)
  • 6th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Cret Berard, Switzerland (1980)
  • 7th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Oxford, United Kingdom (1982)
  • 8th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Bogota, Colombia (1984)
  • 9th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Sydney, Australia (1986)
  • 10th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Washington, DC, USA (1988)
  • 11th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Paris, France (1990)
  • 12th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Buenos Aires, Argentina (1992)
  • 13th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Tokyo, Japan (1994)
  • 14th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Cape Town, South Africa (1996)
  • 15th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Edmonton, Canada (1998)
  • 16th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Amsterdam, Netherlands (2001)
  • 17th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Seoul, South Korea (2002)
  • 18th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Barcelona, Spain (2004)
  • 19th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – New Delhi, India (2006)
  • 20th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Panama City, Panama (2008)
  • 21st IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Singapore (2011)
  • 22nd IAVE World Volunteer Conference – London, United Kingdom (2012)
  • 23rd IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Gold Coast, Australia (2014)
  • 24th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Mexico City, Mexico(2016)
  • 25th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Augsburg, Germany(2018)
  • 26th IAVE World Volunteer Conference – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2021)

Photo: 24th IAVE World Volunteer Conference, Mexico City, Mexico

Regional Volunteer Conference

Between World Volunteer Conferences, IAVE organizes and sponsors Regional Volunteer Conferences. The conferences are aimed to engage more people from all parts of the world and to stimulate discussions on both global and region-specific issues. To date, we have organized 4 Africa, 3 Arab Nations, 16 Asia-Pacific, 2 Europe and 7 Latin America Regional Volunteer Conferences.

List of Regional Volunteer Conferences

Africa

  • 3rd Africa Regional Volunteer Conference – Nairobi, Kenya (2011)
  • 4th Africa Regional Volunteer Conference – Kigali, Rwanda (2015)

Arab Nations

  • 2nd Arab Nations Regional Volunteer Conference – Muscat, Oman (2013)
  • 3rd Arab Nations Regional Volunteer Conference – Manama, Bahrain (2015)

Asia-Pacific

  • 7th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Taipei, Chinese Taipei (1999)
  • 8th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – New Delhi, India (2001)
  • 9th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Manila, Philippines (2003)
  • 10th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Hong Kong, China (2005)
  • 11th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Nagoya, Japan (2007)
  • 12th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei (2009)
  • 13th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Changwon, South Korea (2011)
  • 14th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Macau, China (2013)
  • 15th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2017)
  • 16th Asia-Pacific Regional Volunteer Conference – Bangkok, Thailand (2019)

Europe

  • 2015 European Conference on Corporate Volunteering – Zurich, Switzerland (2015)
  • 2017 European Conference on Corporate Volunteering – Madrid, Spain (2017)

Latin America

  • 6th Latin America Regional Volunteer Conference – Guayaquil, Ecuador (2013)
  • 7th Latin America Regional Volunteer Conference – Antigua, Guatemala (2017)

Photo: 3rd Arab Nations Regional Volunteer Conference, Bahrain

Special Interest Convenings

Each year, IAVE holds special convenings to focus attention on issues of significant interest to target audiences.

Youth

Youth-focused & youth-led convenings to support and empower young volunteers under the age of 30.

The Global Youth Volunteering Summit is held every 10 years to bring together youth volunteers worldwide to share their knowledge and expertise. The first two summits were held in Tokyo in 2001 and Barranquilla in 2011. The next summit will be in held in Edmonton Canada in 2023.

Corporate

Convenings built for the corporate sector, sharing best practices and innovative employee volunteering programs.

The 2019 Corporate Volunteering Forum on Transformative Impact unearthed transformative approaches to corporate volunteering that enable companies to increase their impact. The 2016 Forum on Corporate Volunteering Response to the Refugee Challenge discussed what companies could do to respond to the situation and inspired new approaches, initiatives and partnerships.

Leadership

Bringing together volunteer leadership organizations to strategically align and form global partnerships

The 2019 Latin America Volunteer Leadership Summit invited volunteer leaders in the Latin American region to discuss various trends and challenges, catered specifically for the region’s volunteer community. The Global Volunteering Leadership Summit will be held in Abu Dhabi in 2021, bringing together leadership organizations around the world for a strategic discussion on the future of volunteering.

Where We've Been

Click on the markers to learn more about where we've held our convenings in the past!