AU Model National Volunteerism Policy: Expanding opportunities for youth volunteerism in Africa

Aug 10, 2022

Goal 2: Educated Citizens & Skills Revolution | General

Volunteerism is a critical component of ensuring youth participation across the African Continent. It hinges on ensuring the people around you are well taken care of – it is about taking what you have and sharing it deliberately and generously. It is about fostering transformative civic participation. 

Whatever forms it may take, volunteerism in Africa contributes to economic and social development, benefiting society at large, communities, and the individual volunteer. In fact, volunteerism reinforces the traditions of cooperation that bind African communities together. 

It was in recognition of these positive contributions that the AU incorporated volunteerism into the African Youth Charter. Therefore, promoting meaningful participation of youth in all spheres of society stands as one of the key elements of the African Youth Charter. The AU Youth Charter requires the Member States to institute policy and programs that advance the youth agenda to ensure youth participation and peer-to-peer learning.

In the bid to accelerate volunteerism, the African Youth Volunteer Corps (AU-YVC) Program was launched in 2010 to recruit, train, and deploy youth volunteers for twelve months in any country other than their own. Besides, the AUC Youth Division has also introduced AU internships, fellowships, facilitation of exchanges, and a coordination mechanism by way of the AU Continental Volunteer Linkage Platform and the AU Reference Group on Volunteerism with the prime objective of promoting volunteerism across the Member Countries and giving young people the opportunity to gain professional work experience.

For volunteerism to contribute to the actualization of the national, continental, and global development agendas, there has to be enabling policy in place that institutionalizes and creates a suitable environment for volunteers and indeed volunteerism to thrive across the continent. To this effect, the AUC Youth Division through the AU Continental Volunteer Linkage Platform in collaboration with VSO initiated the development of the AU Model National Volunteerism Policy to accelerate the institutionalization of volunteerism in the Member States as a catalyst for development and enhance the achievement of Agenda 2063. In connection with this, the African Union Youth Division hosted a workshop to validate the AU Model National Volunteerism Policy.

Speaking at the stakeholders’ validation meeting, the acting Director of the Women, Gender, and Youth Directorate, Prudence Ngwenya stated that expanding opportunities for youth volunteerism contributes to the realization of the ideals embedded in the 1 Million Next Level Initiative, which aims to reach 300 million young Africans by 2030. She emphasized the need for more resources to ensure smooth rolling out of this model national volunteerism policy and developing a national volunteering policy by the member countries. In this regard, she urged that:

“For volunteerism to contribute to the actualization of this initiative, there has to be an enabling policy in place that institutionalizes and creates a suitable environment for volunteers and indeed volunteerism to thrive across the continent. Therefore, I call upon our valued development partners to stand with us in supporting our rolling-out efforts and other country acceleration endeavors.”

On his part, the CEO of VSO, Dr. Philip Goodwin, remarked that it has been found that volunteers to be critical agents for Inclusion, Innovation, Ownership, Participation and Inspiration.However, he indicated that although volunteerism has these many attributes and benefits, the sector has learnt that volunteering is not cost free, it is not a source of cheap labor and neither is it a replacement for employed staff hence more intentional efforts should be placed in recognizing them. He said, this is one of the key relevant parts of the AU Model National Volunteerism Policy. “VSO is pleased to partner with the AUC Youth Division in developing the AU Model National Volunteerism Policy. We at VSO believe that this model policy contributes towards institutionalization of volunteerism and accelerating action at the AU Member States' levels”, he added. 

As we prepare to integrate feedback from the various validations, it is imperative to encourage more of such models and frameworks around volunteerism in order to ensure equal promotion of volunteerism as a catalyst of development and enhancing social cohesion in Africa and the World at large.

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