International Volunteer Day 2020

Saturday 5 December is the United Nations' International Volunteer Day 2020, and this year the theme is ‘Together We Can Through Volunteering’.

The COVID19 pandemic has highlighted the valuable role that volunteers play across the world. This year in particular, International Volunteer Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the differences made by volunteers who have worked together on the frontline of the pandemic. It is also a moment to reflect on the challenges and difficulties volunteers face when dealing with crises as well as promoting long term change.

To mark this occasion, researchers at Northumbria’s Centre for International Development have written a blog post about how their collaborative research with the NGO Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), is helping us understand how volunteers come together to create change.

The Northumbria University Centre for International Development is a recognised centre of global excellence for research on volunteering and its role in tackling global challenges. Collaborations between academics and leading global volunteering organisations such as VSO are helping policy makers, practitioners, volunteers and academics to understand how volunteering is changing. Working with VSO, Northumbria academics are investigating the interactions between different types of volunteers working together, by chance or design, and how these interactions may improve development outcomes for communities.

To read more about the project, visit the VSO website and read the blog post written by the research team: Volunteering together: do we really know how it works

Click on the images below to find out more about some of the other research projects taking place at Northumbria University which are exploring the role of volunteering.