28th World Volunteer Conference · Riyadh
A global gathering of volunteer leaders, researchers, and changemakers, exploring how innovation and transformation can deepen the social impact of volunteering.
IAVE’s biennial World Volunteer Conference, begun in 1970, affirms a global culture of volunteering and the importance of volunteers to social cohesion. Each conference celebrates volunteering and engages the widest diversity of volunteer leadership from around the world.
The conference considers current issues and global trends, and creates space for thought leadership, knowledge sharing, and learning about policy and practice. More than anything, it creates bonds. Participants often say the people they meet arrive as strangers and leave as friends.
The 28th edition comes to Riyadh in late 2027, hosted by Ghadan and set within the Kingdom’s fast-growing volunteer landscape.
Five conference themes frame the program, from investment and equity to future generations, AI and digital transformation, partnership, and rethinking how we recognize and measure volunteering.
IAVE is delighted to select Ghadan as host for the 2027 World Volunteer Conference. In Saudi Arabia, volunteering is closely tied to giving back and helping others, with a strong tradition of voluntary service and a central place in Vision 2030’s goals for sustainable development.
Volunteering is a listed national priority, with a target of one million volunteers by 2030 that has already been exceeded, with numbers now at 1.2 million.
Since its founding in 2012, Ghadan has been a catalyst for community engagement, helping shape national volunteer strategies and supporting grassroots initiatives across the Kingdom and the wider Arab region, through programs and platforms like the National Volunteer Portal and the Saudi National Volunteer Standard.
Learn more about Ghadan and Saudi Vision 2030.
IAVE and our conference partner Ghadan invite researchers, practitioners, and policy specialists to submit papers for the 28th IAVE World Volunteer Conference. The focus is secondary research: contributions should draw on existing evidence, published research, policy literature, evaluations, datasets, and case studies from 2022 to 2026, rather than new primary data collection.
This call seeks rigorous, forward-looking research that can inform conference dialogue and advance the Call to Action for the Future of Volunteering, the global agenda to recognize, support, and safeguard volunteers. Selected papers will shape conference sessions and feed pre-conference knowledge exchange from January to October 2027.
Volunteerism and social cohesion
How volunteering builds trust, solidarity, belonging, and community cohesion in a world shaped by disruption, polarization, and inequality.
Policy and enabling environments
How laws, national strategies, funding, and institutional arrangements strengthen or constrain volunteering, and what changes when governments treat volunteers as a strategic asset.
Investment in volunteering
How financial investment, infrastructure, philanthropy, corporate leadership, and public funding can better recognize and sustain the value volunteering creates.
Equity, inclusion, and access
The financial, logistical, cultural, institutional, and social barriers to participation, and how volunteering ecosystems can become more inclusive and culturally responsive.
The future of volunteering needs people
How demographic change, technology, AI, and new civic behaviors affect motivation and involvement, particularly among younger and future generations.
Volunteering supporting wellbeing and enhanced livelihoods
How the benefits of volunteering for individuals, from connection and confidence to health and life chances, can be better understood, communicated, and measured.
Innovation in volunteer engagement
Emerging models such as digital, hybrid, micro, youth-led, skills-based, episodic, and cross-sector volunteering, and whether infrastructure is adapting quickly enough.
Artificial intelligence and digital transformation
The current and potential impact of AI and digital tools on volunteer roles, engagement, safeguarding, inclusion, infrastructure, ethics, and the future ecosystem.
Working together to make a difference
How intersectoral, cross-sectoral, and cross-border collaboration strengthens volunteer involvement and impact, and how volunteers help co-create solutions.
Corporate and employee volunteering
How corporate citizenship is evolving, and what trends will shape the future of employer-supported and skills-based volunteering.
Making the invisible visible
How the significant social, economic, civic, and human value of volunteering can be better understood, evidenced, communicated, and recognized.
Submissions may address one theme or combine several where this strengthens the analysis. Selected papers are expected to offer opinion-shaping analysis, demonstrate thought leadership, and generate practical insight for policy, infrastructure, funders, organizations, communities, and volunteers.
Submissions run in two stages: an abstract of up to 350 words, then a full paper if selected. Accepted papers receive 5,000 USD each, plus a DOI, a slot in the global webinar series, and travel support to present in Riyadh. Full requirements, format, and the submission portal are on the WVC 2027 submission guidelines. Authors may submit more than one proposal, each submitted separately. First stage abstract deadline is September 18, 2026 (17:00 BST).
Questions about the call, requirements, or review process? Contact Wendy Osborne OBE, IAVE Senior Consultant, at [email protected].
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