Understanding the Modern Volunteer

What does the modern volunteer look like? The upcoming Volunteering Australia National Conference will examine the modern volunteer and the critical issues around their community involvement.

Volunteering Australia, the national peak body for volunteering, will hold the 13th Annual Conference on Volunteering in Melbourne on 27-29 October.

The event will explore the challenges that affect the more than 5.4 million Australians who volunteer.

The conference will highlight current issues, emerging trends and new technologies in volunteering, and discuss the important of how this will affect growing volunteerism.

Volunteering Australia spokesperson Peter Cocks says a panel discussion on definitions of volunteering will examine what it means to be a volunteer today, and how changes in technology and new ideas such as corporate volunteering have changed what the modern volunteer looks like.

He says a presentation from KPMG Business Advisor Bernard Salt will challenge the audience as he presents a scenario a decade into the future. Salt will discuss what the future is likely to look like, and what role volunteering will play in shaping the future.

The conference includes international speakers from the United States and Ireland, who Cocks says will give a broader international perspective on many of the issues facing volunteering in Australia.

The conference focuses on the themes ‘Initiate, Discover, Examine’ and aims to initiate debate, discuss and analyse issues affecting volunteering, discover new technologies that can affect or support volunteering and examine initiatives that will grow volunteering and promote best practice in volunteering.

More than 70 presentations and workshops will be held across the three days of the conference, with highlights from keynote speakers including:

• Patrick McClure, Ethics Fellow, Not-For-Profit Sector, will discuss ethical decision making in the Not for Profit sector, including approaches to ethical decision making, and the importance of building ethical cultures.
• Kenn Allen, President, Civil Society Consulting Group (USA) and Sarah Hayes, Director of the Global Corporate Volunteer Council, International Association for Volunteer Effort (USA) will provide delegates with the current state of play of corporate volunteering from an international perspective, and draw on findings from the Global Corporate Volunteering Research Project.
• Ms Elaine Bradley, Chief Executive Officer, Volunteering Ireland, will share key trends and developments in volunteering from an international perspective, as well as how the volunteer infrastructure has evolved in Europe and the UK.
• Dr Ron Edwards, Australian Social Inclusion Board Member, will discuss how volunteering fits into a broader social inclusion agenda, and the role of the social inclusion board.

Volunteering Australia encourages the following people to attend:

• CEOs and managers of Not for Profit organisations
• Managers of volunteers
• Policy makers
• Government officials
• CSR personnel
• Academics/researchers
• Volunteers
• Anyone with an interest in volunteering

13th National Conference on Volunteering
When: 27-29 October, 2010
Where: The Sebel and Citigate
              Albert Park, Melbourne

Register online at www.volunteeringaustralia.org/conference