A National Agenda on Volunteering: Beyond the International Year of Volunteers

A National Agenda on Volunteering: Beyond the International Year of Volunteers is an important legacy of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV).

The National Agenda on Volunteering provides a policy framework for the future of volunteering.  It outlines six strategic goals and highlights specific outcomes needed to ensure that the gains from the International Year are maximised, volunteers are better supported and volunteering remains an important and sustainable social movement.

Volunteering Australia is engaged in ongoing work with all stakeholders to progress the outcomes sought in the National Agenda on Volunteering.

Through the National Agenda on Volunteering the community, volunteer-involving organisations, business and government are called upon to work together to:

1. Publicly respect and value in enduring, formal, and tangible ways, the essential contribution that volunteers make to building and sustaining the Australian community.
2. Ensure that volunteers have legal status and are afforded protection through every piece of legislation and public policy that affects them and their work.
3. Ensure that all new legislation, by-laws and public policies, developed at any level of government, which may affect volunteers and their work, works only to facilitate and sustain volunteering.
4. Acknowledge that the activity of volunteering is not without cost and develop means by which Australian volunteers and volunteer-involving organisations are supported and funded to provide valuable services.
5. Ensure excellence in all levels of volunteer involvement and volunteer management in order to encourage, protect and enhance the work of volunteers.
6. Ensure that volunteering is a potent, dynamic and unifying social force for community benefit by acknowledging and accepting that it is a diverse and evolving activity.

A National Agenda on Volunteering: Beyond the International Year of Volunteers is the result of comprehensive national consultations conducted by the IYV National Community Council of Advice (co-chaired by Volunteering Australia and Australian Volunteers International) during 2001.