March 27, 2011: International News From the Field

27 March:The Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies (CCSS) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have announced the release of a new manual to help statistical agencies around the world track the amount, type, and value of volunteer work in their respective countries.

The Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work (68 pages, PDF) – available free of charge – is a unique, internationally sanctioned guide to generating reliable, official data on volunteer work using a common definition and approach. Previous research by CCSS has found that even conservative estimates of the value of volunteering is roughly double the value of donations of cash and other contributions by individuals, foundations, and corporations. Their press release on the release of the Manual is titled “Counting the Volunteers the World Counts On.”

Supported in part by the United Nations Volunteers, the manual includes a definition of volunteer work as well as a cost-effective means of measuring its scale and economic value using existing statistical systems.

CCSS director Lester M. Salamon said:

Volunteer work is an enormous renewable resource for social, economic, and environmental problem-solving throughout the world, as we are sure to discover again in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. But the lack of solid data on volunteering has left it under-valued and its full potentials unrealized. This manual promises to change this fundamentally. The challenge now is to secure government commitments to implement it.

Click here to find links to the Manual and a variety of free “Annexes” supporting the work. The site also provides information on the European Volunteer Measurement Project that has adopted the Manual to implement during this European Year of Volunteering.