Newly-formed International Volunteer Day (IVD) Steering Committee had its first meeting on July 31, 2009, at the office of Philippine National Volunteer Service Coordinating Agency (PNVSCA) to chalk-out future activities and plans.

The meeting, attended by 13 members and the PNVSCA staff, discussed this year's theme of activity. Since United Nations Volunteers (UNV) is focusing on environment as its international theme, the committee decided to emphasize on environmental issues.

The meeting decided that as the main event in Metro Manila, a clean-up campaign will be launched either at Pasig River or Manila Bay. The programme will have motivational speeches followed by a clean-up of the selected area.

Municipal and provincial IVD activities also will be carried out prior to the culminating event on December 5. To this end, the focal areas have been identified as; Cavite, Baguio, Pampanga, Naga and Dumaguete. Focal persons were also appointed for coordinating events in Manila and each local area.

The spade work on the plans has already started with an aim to involve a large number of people in municipal, provincial activities and the main event in Manila.

IVD was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 40/212 on December 17, 1985. Since then, governments, the UN system and civil society organisations have successfully joined volunteers around the world to celebrate the IVD on December 5.

In the Philippines, IVD is celebrated in conjunction with the National Volunteer Month.

In 2008, PNVSCA and UNV jointly hosted the symposium on Youth Volunteering and HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Philippine Normal University on December 5. It was followed by the Advocacy Run for Volunteerism at the University of the Philippines — Diliman on December 7 in collaboration with Runnex, a non-profit club composed of corporate executives.

This year UNV and its government counterpart, PNVSCA, aim to motivate more volunteers at IVD, making the programmes more attractive. The IVD Steering Committee has been formed on the recommendation of UNV and PNVSCA with an objective to plan, coordinate and organise the December 5 event.

The committee has volunteers from Foreign Volunteers Organizations and Civil Society Organisations including UNV, US Peace Corps, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (AYAD), Volunteering for International Development from Australia (VIDA), Korea Overseas Volunteers (KOV), Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) and Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP).

UNV provides technical and operational support to facilitate such discussions, including setting up and maintenance of web-based communication modes and troubleshooting technical difficulties to enable every member of the IVD Steering Committee actively and fully participate in planning the IVD event.

"I was happy to see the members of our committee. Even though we had only three hours for discussion, I think the meeting was great. Everyone was passionate about IVD event. It's true we gave good ideas, but it will be better if all the committee members come and share views. We have to make greater effort to spread the message and inform what IVD is so that more people join us," opines Myungjin Jung from Korea Overseas Volunteers.