International Volunteer Day 2009: Volunteering for our earth

4-5 December at the Public Ground in Damphu, Tsirang Dzongkhag

November 19, 2009, Thimphu: Under the environmental theme of “Volunteering for Our Earth” volunteers from 14 local and international volunteer involving organisations and individual volunteers are gathering at the Public Ground in Damphu, Tsirang Dzongkhag to celebrate their contributions to the Bhutanese society. This is the first International Volunteers Day celebration organised outside of Thimphu.

“I feel as though I am able to make a difference in the world and use my skills. It allows me to genuinely feel as though I am part of the world community.”

This is how a UN Volunteer describes being a volunteer. The International Volunteer Day is marked every year and offers an opportunity for volunteer organizations and individual volunteers to concretely show their contributions to peace and development. At the event, UN Volunteers will share their experiences on being a volunteer and will be available for interviews with the press.

The celebration in Tsirang will be hosted by the Tsirang Dzongkhag Administration, Volunteers in Bhutan (VIB) and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme. The Vice President of the Bhutan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), Thinley Palden Dorji, is invited as a keynote speaker.

A wide range of activities is taking place during these two days: A volunteer group of Samtse College of Education will be presenting a skit ‘How we can protect environment from polluting’ and students from Damphu Higher/Lower secondary school are performing environment related dances.

The winners of “How we can volunteer for our earth” competition will also be announced at the opening ceremony. This competition was organised by the UNV together with the Ministry of Education in October. The best entry in each category will be printed on the Tashi Cell mobile voucher to send out the messages across the country. An environment related volunteer activity is taking place on the 5th which we welcome everybody to participate.

Recognizing the crucial role volunteers play in addressing environmental issues, the global theme for the International Volunteer Day is “Volunteering for our planet”. Through a new webpage, volunteers can register their hours of climate work, So far over 370,000 hours of volunteer work has been registered. ‘Volunteering for our Planet’ is the UNV contribution to the UN campaign “Seal the Deal” at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and the number of hours will be presented for the world leaders.

The media are welcomed to join this event. A bus will leave from UN House Thursday 3 December at 9:30am. There will be up to five seats available for media. For queries, please contact
Maki Mizuno (UNV) maki.mizuno@undp.org (17110103)
or communication intern Rebecca Jafari, Rebecca.jafari@undp.org (17973523).