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UN Volunteers Policy Paper ‘Caring Cities’ Volunteering in Urban Development and the role of the United Nations Volunteer Programme PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME UNV’s niche in urban work PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME UNV’s niche in urban work Page 34 - Mixed teams: often different types of UN Volunteers work together in one project. This mixed team approach provides the necessary combination of skills in a given project, and allows the UN Volunteers to learn from each other and to enhance the effectiveness of the project. - Special characteristics: UNV makes a continuous effort to design and provide innovative approaches. One illustration is the use of what could be called ‘mirror volunteers’, volunteers who have experienced a problem/need similar to that of the target population of a given project. For example, the use of local government volunteers. UNV offers its administrative apparatus to facilitate the fielding of public officers from the local government of a given city to travel to another city to provide assistance to their counterparts there. Mirror volunteers may also be used to empower excluded groups. For example, the use of disabled UN Volunteers in a project which aims to increase the socio-economic opportunities of a group of disabled people. Another initiative of UNV in this front is the use of HIV-infected patients as UN Volunteers in a project targeting HIV-AIDS. The use of mirror volunteers in a given project provides a unique added-value that can only be achieved through the personal interaction between people who have experienced the same problem or need. In addition, the granting of UNV status to people such as the disabled and HIV-AIDS patients conveys a powerful symbolic message, i.e. that the U.N. recognizes the capacity of people that society often excludes. – Neutrality/impartiality: The existence of internal differences within and between urban communities and between different urban stakeholders often lead to conflicts. This highlights the value of another attribute of UNV. Being part of the UN system, UNV operates under the principles of both neutrality and impartiality in situations of conflict and of potential conflict among stakeholders. This helps in reducing a programme’s vulnerability to internal political pressures and in mediating between stakeholders in a given project/programme. Page 35 – Speed of technical response: emergency situations constitute a sad and constant feature of many cities and towns in developing countries – taking into consideration that the urban poor live in precarious conditions (housing built with deficient materials and in hazardous settings, lack of food security, rise in urban violence, etc). When grassroots organizations need help from international agencies, the existence of intermediaries between the two often delays the process. Bearing this in mind, the unique combination of working at the grassroots level while being directly linked to the international system allows UNV to tap directly and constantly from the informational and technical apparatus of the UN, hence delivering fresh and quick technical responses to emerging problems in the field, whenever required. – Voluntary ethos: the UN Volunteers are able to use the above attributes in association with their voluntary ethos, which, as noted throughout in this paper, brings benefits of its own. – Human resources (volunteers) management: UNV can relieve other organizations from the complex process of managing human resources, i.e identifying, contracting, placing, administering and monitoring volunteers anywhere in the world. There are some 70 UNV Programme Officers in more than 60 countries, dedicated to managing the work of the volunteers in the field, and identifying opportunities for UNV. Over the years UNV has developed stable, proven procedures (including standard ‘Conditions of Service’) to manage and co-ordinate volunteer operations globally. A case for sustainability As in the case of any other form of external/international assistance, attention should be paid to the sustainability of the actions of the UN Volunteers. Therefore, their interventions are designed with such a concern in mind. In this regard, it is important to note that it is not only possible to achieve this objective, but in many cases the very work of the UN Volunteers becomes the agent of sustainability. Because, in many circumstances, the sustainability of development projects is consolidated through long-term work at the grassroots, i.e. exactly the type of work carried out by the UN Volunteers. The next section will present a selected number of concrete activities of UNV, through which the aforementioned attributes are realized.
UN Volunteers Policy Paper ‘Caring Cities’ Volunteering in Urban Development and the role of the United Nations Volunteer Programme PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME UNV’s niche in urban work PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME UNV’s niche in urban work Page 36 Selected types of contributions of UN Volunteers in urban related work – Organisational/institutional strengthening: as noted in a previous publication produced by UNV (1995: 45): ‘In most cases… external catalysing agents play an important role in initiating and consolidating the development process [of communities], or accelerating what otherwise would have taken much longer to evolve’. An important part of such work concerns the strengthening of grassroots organizations, such as CBOs (community-based organiza tions). These organizations have played a crucial role in the development of urban communities – e.g. by constituting a forum for each community to get together, organize itself and strengthen its social cohesion/capital; by representing the whole community vis-à-vis the government and other external actors, by catalysing external support, etc. However, such organizations have problems of their own. While they are generally spontaneously formed, without technical planning or managerial backing, they often end up carrying out significant institutional tasks. A large number of urban communities have thousands of members, sometimes even hundreds of thousands (such as the Tondo in Manila, Rocinha in Rio, among others). In such cases, the tasks – and challenges – of urban grassroots organizations are often closer to those of local government – at least in terms of being a representative of the local population, fighting for them along with other stakeholders and bringing in external resources. The difference is that local governmental institutions are planned from the outset, and receive managerial and technical support of various types and sources. However, in order to be maximally effective, these urban grassroots organizations often need support of varying nature. Like other types of sizeable organizations, they need a proper institutional design, and a plan of action for proper institutional functioning. The role played and tasks undertaken by the CBO’s directly benefit from the interactive attributes of UN Volunteers, such as: (i) ability to do labour-intensive work, (ii) long term involvement, (iii) broad scope of action (to address the range of institutional needs throughout the world), (iv) flexibility (to address the differences within and between grassroots organizations), (v) neutrality (to deal with heterogeneous communities) and (vi) volunteerism (to enhance the voluntary ethos of such Page 37 organizations). Beside CBOs, other organizations such as local NGOs and even local government authorities often need the same type of support, and therefore may benefit from UNV’s inputs. – Managerial capacity-building: the aforementioned institutions often lack managerial skills to deal with many day-to-day hurdles or to incorporate the institutional changes noted above. Capacity-building constitutes another type of task which would gain from the unified effect of some of the characteristics of the UN Volunteers, i.e. (i) labour-intensive, (ii) long term work, (iii) flexibility (to address differences within and between organizations); (iv) volunteerism (to secure more intense interpersonal connection and synergism, especially in the case of voluntary organizations). Another route to capacity-building is the substantive involvement of national UN Volunteers, who learn through on-the-job training during the execution of the project(s). – Technical capacity-building: the aforementioned institutions also have deficiencies in technical staff (accountants, information agents, fund-raisers, among many others), therefore require training schemes. Also, many urban communities have a considerable number of people working in the same professional field (e.g. fishermen, bricklayers, rickshaw drivers, domestic servants, etc.), a fact which could justify the establishment of a training scheme in such a field. This type of task is similar to the previous one, therefore would also benefit from UNV’s inputs. – Community animation/orientation: most urban community members are not aware of their rights and opportunities in the city – due to illiteracy and/or recent migration – therefore do not benefit from them. In addition, newcomers are often not aware of the risks and challenges of urban life. Such a situation reveals the importance of a professional who raises the awareness, among the community members, of their rights and orients them in respect of the risks and challenges as well as the opportunities and the benefits of urban living. This constitutes another type of assignment which matches UNV’s forte, as it has to be carried out within the communities on a day-to-day, face-to-face basis over extensive periods of time. The field worker (Section 1) is one type of UN Volunteer that would be particularly appropriate for such an
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