The International Labour Organization and the Johns
Hopkins University
Center for Civil Society Studies will announce today an
agreement to develop an approach for putting volunteer work
on the economic map of the world for the first time. A
start-up grant from United Nations Volunteers will help
underwrite the effort. Administered by the U.N. Development
Programme, UNV is the focal point in the United Nations for
the worldwide promotion of volunteerism.
"Volunteerism is one of the great renewable resources
for social problem solving around the world, yet its scale
and impact have never been fully measured," said Lester M.
Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies
within the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy
Studies.
Sylvester Young, director of the Bureau of Statistics
of the International Labour Organization, said, "The work
of volunteers is one aspect of labor that has not been
covered adequately in statistical systems up to now. Such
work has been growing in importance in both developed and
developing countries, but its statistical measurement has
been overlooked."
The new partnership between ILO and the Johns Hopkins
Center for Civil Society Studies promises to overcome this
problem by developing a recommended procedure for measuring
volunteer work through official labor force surveys in
countries throughout the world, fulfilling a mandate
established in a 2003 U.N. Statistics Division Handbook on
Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts.
This procedure will be presented to the International
Conference of Labour Statisticians in Geneva in December
2008.
"Volunteers play an enormous role in improving health,
preparing for and responding to disasters, and promoting
development throughout the world," said Ad de Raad, UNV
executive coordinator. "We believe this new partnership
between Johns Hopkins and the ILO will finally provide a
systematic way to document this significant expression of
civic engagement."
Young, of the International Labour Organization, said,
"ILO is delighted to be collaborating with Johns Hopkins on
this initiative. The Hopkins center is uniquely qualified
to assist in this task by virtue of its pioneering work in
measuring volunteering and civil society development
throughout the world."
The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies
seeks to improve understanding and the effective
functioning of not-for-profit, philanthropic or "civil
society" organizations in the United States and throughout
the world in order to enhance the contribution these
organizations can make to democracy and the quality of
human life. The center is part of the Johns Hopkins
Institute for Policy Studies and carries out its work
through a combination of research, training and information
sharing, both domestically and internationally. More
information on the center is available at www.jhu.edu/ccss.