IVCO 2021 Inclusive Volunteering for Global Equality Conference Report Published

We are pleased to announce that our IVCO 2021 Inclusive Volunteering for Global Equality Conference Report has been published.

The IVCO conference Inclusive Volunteering for Global Equality IVCO 2021 was hosted online by ActionAid Hellas from the 16th-20th October 2021, in Thessaloniki, Greece. This fully digital conference brought together heads of agencies and other key stakeholders from volunteering for development organisations from around the globe. IVCO is the annual conference of the International Forum for Volunteering for Development (Forum) and stands for “International Volunteer Cooperation Organisations’ Conference”. The theme of IVCO 2021 was Inclusive Volunteering for Global Equality and was framed by three sub-topics: Decolonisation, Digitalisation and Directionality.

The questions of how volunteering for development (V4D) can embrace all forms of diversity and how it can ensure that “no one is left behind” were the main focus of IVCO 2021. Therefore, the different thematic sessions connected broader debates around diversity and inclusion with discussions on the decolonisation of V4D programmes and organisations. While diversity and inclusion have to be analysed in the context of local or national efforts around including a diverse group of people in volunteering programmes, decolonisation draws attention to historical legacies, post-colonial power relations and structural racism on a local and global scale. Both debates are ultimately centred around questions of power, privilege, structural discrimination and mechanisms of exclusion and were therefore addressed jointly at the conference.

IVCO 2021 aimed to link both debates by inviting researchers, practitioners, and volunteers to exchange best practices, discuss the barriers preventing inclusive volunteering on the part of institutions, societies, organisations, and volunteers, and recommend solutions. Over the course of these sessions, not only opportunities and challenges of the sectors’ digital transformation were discussed, but also the possibilities of new models and directionalities to no longer restrict V4D to sending volunteers from traditional donor countries in an effort to connect international, national and local volunteers for more sustainable impacts – in the spirit of decoloniality.

You can download the Inclusive Volunteering for Global Equality – IVCO 2021 Conference Report here and watch our slideshow of IVCO 2021 highlights below (or download the pdf here).

 

This report draws out key points and arguments from IVCO 2021 and highlights exemplary good practices presented at the conference. It aims to carve out where the conference suggests the sector should go from here. The document does not set out to cover all sessions or presentations but does include links to all session recordings and to the research and think papers that accompanied the conference.

The publication of the IVCO 2021 Report is accompanied by the release of the combined Research & Think Pieces prepared for the conference.

All IVCO 2021 documents and videos can be found on the dedicated conference page.