Accueil » TRAINING PROGRAM FOR NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVES ON APRIL 2 AT THE 20TH IAVE WORLD VOLUNTEER CONFERENCE
January 26, 2010

Training program for National Representatives on April 2 at the 20th IAVE World Volunteer Conference

IAVE IRC

Liz Burns started the meeting by thanking the national representatives for the important work they do linking IAVE to the grassroots.

 

The following countries were represented:  

  • Australia
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Chile
  • Colombia
  • Cuba
  • Ecuador
  • France
  • Hong Kong
  • Korea
  • Lebanon
  • Mauritius
  • Mexico
  • New Zealand
  • Panama
  • Philippines
  • Russia
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • Togo
  • USA
  • Venezuela  

Agenda

  • Rights and responsibilities - Debbie Huang
  • Membership and E-IAVE - Dr. Kenn Allen
  • International Resource Center - Anthony Carlisle
  • Break for refreshments
  • Strategic Plan 2007-10 - Kathi Dennis
  • Election of the IAVE board member for national representatives

 

Debbie Huang:
Role - represent your nation at international events and bring IAVE into your nations. Debbie went through the job description of national reps.

 

Kenn Allen:
I am the “former former” president of IAVE, but for the last three or four years my company has had a small contract with IAVE to manage the membership services. So that’s why I have the opportunity to talk to you about membership. The document is titled “Everything you need to learn about IAVE membership.”

Why does IAVE have members? IAVE is a member-based organization, most of whom were individual volunteers in the early days. In the 1980s the balance started to change as organizational membership began to grow. Now we have a good mix of individuals and organizations.

What are the benefits of membership? They get a membership certificate, the E-IAVE and Y-IAVE newsletter, chance to vote, discounts on conference registration, but most important you show solidarity with volunteers around the world.

How many members? Now 523 members from 68 countries. We always have a rapid growth in membership before conferences because people want the discount, and it dips in the second year. When I came in we were down to just over 100 members. In 2002 there were nearly 2,000 members. The current breakdown is 318 individuals, 329 organizations, 7 corporates and 4 youth. The largest membership countries are in Korea, Colombia, Nigeria and the US.

What are the categories of membership? Individual, organizational, organizational soft currency, youth and corporate.

What is a soft currency country? A country where the general level of development means people cannot afford to pay the full dues. This is self defining and most people don’t cheat, though we are trying to persuade Brazil to became a hard currency country! The majority of our members are from soft currency countries. This is good in the sense that it shows IAVE’s diversity, but honestly speaking it also means IAVE charges less for the same services.

How is membership paid? Typically they do it by email after downloading the form online and sending it along with a credit card number to membership@iave.org. You can also pay by cash. We prefer not to get bank transfers because (1) it costs us money, and (2) we don’t always know who is asking for our bank account information.

 

Q&A
Can membership fees be paid to national reps?
Yes. In Nigeria all members pay their dues to Rose Ekeleme who collects it all, and periodically her daughter in the US sends a check. In Bangladesh they pay to the national rep, and at conferences the fees are paid over. It’s flexible. So let me know how you want to do it.

Are members of the national association IAVE members?
No. You have to pay IAVE membership separately. Most national associations have more members than there are members of IAVE. National associations exist in around 12 countries around the world. some are very large, some one or two people.

If an organization joins IAVE, do all the members of the organization become IAVE members?
No. They only get a single membership. If an organization is a member of IAVE, are all its members eligible for scholarships? Maybe. Our policy is the conference host committee must give at least one scholarship. The number varies from conference to conference.

How do we communicate with members?
Almost entirely by email for budget reasons. Probably only 15 of our members do not have emails. Many more give email addresses that don’t work. Every month I get 50 E-IAVE rejects that bounce back. Every so often we try to follow up on these bad emails. But E-IAVE is very quickly put online. We usually put out 11 issues of IAVE a year.

What if you can’t get your E-IAVE?
You can go to the website, where you will also find it in French, Spanish,

What are the roles of national reps?
(1)  Help us build the membership. There’s no way we can promote the membership at a distance, so we have to rely on two or three sources for new members (a) by luck when someone stumbles upon our website, (b) someone comes to a conference, (c) the national rep promotes IAVE. So we are relying on you to give IAVE visibility, credibility and encourage people to sign up. we don’t want you to be salespersons. There’s no quota. We just want you to find people who (a) believe in the value of volunteering (b) believe in the value of international connection.

(2)  Supply us with information for E-IAVE. The hardest thing we do is put out the E-IAVE, so you have to send us content. New Zealand is very good at this. Mauritius is terrible! Language is not a problem - you can send Spanish information to Maria Teresa.

(3)   Build the network in your country. People are more likely to stay IAVE members if you keep them connected, invite them to conferences, have special meetings for them. Maintain the communication with them. I also send out expiry notices which I forward to national reps. I also try to let the national rep know when there is a new member in the country, and will improve this service this year. It does make a difference when a personal note comes from the national rep to keep our membership interested and active.

 

If you are worried about sending your credit card details via email, you can fax it to Kenn’s office.

 

Luz Stella: I would like to suggest that one of the roles of the national rep is to support scholarships for the conferences. 

Ruth: In terms of pitching membership of IAVE in Canada, we need to get a sense of the membership and organizations that are members. Volunteer Canada has 2,000 members, but we emphasize that they reach into 100,000s of volunteers through community organizations and extended network. This gives us a powerful pitch. Is there some way of capturing a profile of membership

Kenn: We will take that suggestion to the newly formed membership committee.

Maria Teresa: Do national reps have to be members and volunteers?
Kenn: It is required that national reps are members of IAVE. There are organizations that work as paid staff.

Galina: Perhaps there should be a certificate for national reps.

Debbie: We can pass these questions on in our brainstorming session to Dr. Lee and the board when he arrives.

Luz Stella: I would like to thank Kenn for always answering emails very quickly and giving us a very good newsletter.

 

Strategic plan by Kathi Denis:
The first IAVE strategic plan was written for IYV in 2001. It was because of the strategic plan that we were able to keep developing as an organization through the difficult times of economic downturn after 911 in the same year.

The structure of IAVE is very good, but we are still working on filling the empty rooms with content.

In 2001 the board structure changed from a regional basis to an issues and regions mix. Goal 2 talks about policy and practice. The best way to do this was to recruit board members in strategic areas of interest such as volunteer centers, international volunteering, youth and national representatives. Not all these positions are filled, so we would welcome national reps to recommend people to us. The structure is here, but we need people to fill the room.

Please take the opportunity to talk to members of the board of directors while you are here.

This is the first national rep training since 2002, which was also the first time we elected a representative for national representatives on the board.

Kenn mentioned membership, and Anthony talked about the resource center and publications. But there are more resources we are developing to help you understand the strategic plan and help you recruit members to the organization.

Right after IYV we had 2,000 members. We had more resources. We had an executive director. We also had 90 national representatives. This was before the internet had really started, so most everything was done through faxes and letters!

We need to ask what kind of membership we want to be. We need a membership that will help us fulfill these goals. It’s not always about numbers. It’s about having organizations that represent constituency groups, that go far beyond our immediate scope. We also need you to inform us about how we can help you, and help you recruit people to the cause of supporting volunteerism.

Being from the US, we have lots of organizations that we can belong to, and we are mostly pretty clear about why we join them. Sometimes intangible things like solidarity and international networking are difficult to explain. That’s why the strategic plan is so important.

We have a very interesting opportunity in IYV+10. The excitement is growing, the SC is going to make a presentation to the general assembly, and other things are happening which will make it easier to

The only region we have had regional conferences in is Asia-Pacific. The 11th was held in Nagoya Japan last year. The last regional conference in Latin America was Bolivia. We had a meeting of Latin American representatives in 2002. There were 25 national reps there. We know what the power of face-to-face meetings can mean.

We’ve restarted regional activity in North America thanks to help from IJLA, and CEV is doing the same in Europe. So even though these are not IAVE conferences, IAVE has a space in those events.

In Goal 4 on good governance, I ca assure you that the board of directors are very hard working, diligent, and budget minded. The structure is taken care of, but we need you to fill the room.

The current strategic plan goes to 2010. So we will be developing a new strategic plan to go through 2011. There will be a world conference in 2011. With your help, we will be able to achieve our goals.

 

Q&A
Tim Burns: New Zealand is a hard currency country with ‘soft’ organizations with few dollars to work on. Is there another way to look at the group leader corporate structure to help those who can’t afford to pay.
Kathi: That issue is on the agenda of the membership committee. We do need to figure out a strategy that keeps members inclusive without taking out of their pocket. For example, we have seven youth members, but 225 young people just finished the youth conference! What we need to do is pull in youth organizations, let them pay the fees, and make their members part of IAVE.
Amelita: When the board was thinking of priorities and plans, we took your ideas into consideration. The strategies we are using were strategies that were successful at the local level. So the goals come from you and your ideas have been counted.

 

J.P. Lee, Hong Kong: How does the GCVC relate to the volunteer centers?
Kathi: GCVC is not trying to intrude into the territory of national volunteer centers and your relations with corporates, you have to be a global company to join GCVC. We hope to help you link to these corporations through the GCVC. Perhaps there are also some global corporations in Hong Kong who would be interested in linking with GCVC and thereby get involved with AVS.

 

Tim Burns, New Zealand: Should we be encouraging local bossiness to join GCVC?
Kathi: Yes. For example, the four out of five GCVC founding members contributed to this world conference. So it is to their benefit and your benefit too.

 

Dacil: In the case of Telefonica, we contacted the local office in Panama first, and they put me in touch with the global headquarters, and now they have joined GCVC and are also sponsoring this conference.

 

Luz Stella: It would be important for the GCVC members to inform their local branches that they are part of the GCVC. When Liz was in Colombia we invited Citi to an event we organized, and after that we tried to invite them to other events, but had little success.

 

Kathi: The size of the GCVC has tripled over the last year and a half.

 

Brazil: Last month we created the Brazilian Corporate Volunteer Council. The founders were 24 large corporations in Brazil. The goal is to bring them together nationally. Those corporations believe in volunteerism, but they don’t yet believe in sharing internationally. I’ve been talking to them about IAVE for many years, but for them it’s not important yet. So we have to work harder on this to make some of them join IAVE.

 

Dacil: We had a GCVC presentation here in Panama. Many companies were interested but couldn’t join because they are locally based. So I think the Brazilian model is great, and we should learn more about it.

 

Susana: In Mexico we have the Mexican Center for Philanthropy, which has been working with corporations. They get a certificate for best practices in CSR, and every year more are getting the certificate.

 

Kathi: What’s been interesting to me is that those companies whether they are national or global - once they figure out a model that works for them, they want to tell everyone about it. So it’s exciting for IAVE to be able to help them share that enthusiasm. GCVC needs to find ways to take advantage of this.

 

Daniel, Chile: National representatives have an important role to play and need to promote IAVE and volunteering in our countries. But how do we do that? Our governments are losing prestige in the world, and civil society has more ideas to contribute. The volunteers would like to do more. A good thing would be for IAVE, through its partnership with Johns Hopkins and other organizations, to influence policies and give us more tools to strengthen our negotiating position and influence society. There’s much more that we need to do. We have to overcome the fear we have of talking to our governments.

 

Kathi: If you look at the program of the conference, that’s what we need to do. We have 8 forums, including a research and government forum. IAVE now has recognition to attract researchers and governments to our conferences to boast about their success and also learn from us as well.

 

Luz Stella: I want to comment about the leadership of IAVE. We have received information that there is a strong partnership between IAVE and UNV. It is difficult to get the UN involved in our work. When it’s successful it’s down to personal relations rather than institutional ties. One request from us to the board is make the partnership with UNV translate into work on the ground. We think it’s important for IYV+10.

Dacil: That’s absolutely true. In the case of Panama, we have had big problems involving UNDP in the conference.

Kathi: I can’t speak for the UN, but their involvement in the conference has been greater than ever before, so it is a very slow process.

 

Ecuador: We had a good example in Ecuador of how to work with the UN.

 

Kang Hyun Lee: IAVE’s power to influence the world comes from the membership and the national representatives. Over the last 8 years, we’ve experienced IYV. Over 20 countries have passed or amended volunteer law to improve the situation in their countries. Many big organizations have shown an interest in volunteerism. It’s good volunteerism is becoming popular. But we no longer hold the monopoly on volunteerism. We have to be aware that changes in volunteering worldwide. Many people mentioned partnership strengthening, especially with UNV. One way we can do this is through increased publicity. I’m a scientist and we say, “publish or perish”.

 

Election of the IAVE board member for national representatives

Announcement of voting delegates:

(1)     Australia, Cary Pedicini
(2)     Brazil, Heloisa Coelho
(3)     Colombia, Luz Stella Alvarez
(4)     Ecuador, Gladys Almeida de Franco
(5)     France, Collette Robert
(6)     Hong Kong , J.P. Lee
(7)     Korea, Ms. Kim
(8)     Lebanon, Milo Ghossein (abstained from voting)
(9)    Mauritius, Mahendranath Busgopaul (abstained from voting)
(10)   Mexico, Susana Barnetche
(11)   New Zealand, Tim Burns
(12)   Panama, Dacil Acevedo Riquelme
(13)   Philippines, Amelita Dayrit-Go
(14)   Russia, Galina Bodrenkova
(15)   Singapore, Jason Wee
(16)   Taiwan, Debbie Huang
(17)   Togo, Honore Kossi Sietso
(18)   USA, Susan Danish
(19)   Venezuela, Iraida Manzanilla

 

Nominations

  • J.P. Lee nominated Debbie
  • Luz Stella nominated Dacil

 

Dacil: When we organized the conference we included the national representative training. My expectation is to strengthen the national representatives. They are the ambassadors that represent IAVE on the ground. The strengthening of IAVE has a lot to do with reporting and publishing what we are doing. We can do that through the internet and other means, and I think IAVE is a wonderful network of networks and leaders, and the national reps are a key part of that.

 

Debbie: Being a board member is not about power but about the responsibility and devoting I have given to the position since 2006. I started the connection to work with you in many ways, through a working plan and action to strengthen the role and function of national reps. This NR training is just the beginning, but I feel I am half way there, and hope I can continue to strengthen IAVE as a leading organization around the world.

 

Result

  • Spoiled ballots 2
  • Debbie: 11
  • Dacil: 6

 

Debbie thanked everyone for their support and pledged to keep her promises.