Website www.icvolunteers.org Number of volunteers 13,000 | Founded 1999 | |
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Type Non-profit, Social and Humanitarian organization Location Geneva, Switzerland, with country offices in France, Spain, Mali, South Africa, Canada and Senegal Key people Viola Krebs, Adama Samassékou Motto Linking knowledge with needs Profiles | ||
Icv in a nutshell
ICVolunteers (ICVolontaires / ICVoluntarios) is an international non-profit organization (federation) active in the field of communications, in particular cybervolunteerism, languages and conference support. ICVolunteers works with volunteers to implement social and educational programs in order to help populations and local communities to develop. Through volunteer effort, it cooperates with organizations in the humanitarian, social, environmental and medical fields to implement projects and conferences at local, national and international levels. In addition, ICVolunteers promotes volunteerism and its recognition, by enhancing civic commitment and involvement, and by providing leadership and links between organizations, individuals and communities. With its headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland), ICVolunteers has offices and permanent representation in a number of other countries, including France, South Africa, Mali, Spain, Brazil and Canada. Work of ICVolunteers began in 1997.
Contents
Network
ICVolunteers is a network organization, linking knowledge with needs. Its network includes close to 14,000 individuals, volunteers and partners worldwide, speaking 170 different languages and residing in over 180 countries.
Mission
ICVolunteers is an organization the mission of which is, on one hand, to create opportunities of personal, social and professional development, and on the other hand, accompany structures, institutions, associations, communities and companies in the implementation of programs and projects.
Themes
Language, culture and society, education, science and research, information and communication technologies, migration, sustainable economic and social development, peace, health, human rights, humanitarian.
Programs and projects
Programs include the CyberVolunteers Program that recruits, trains and coordinates volunteers with information and communication technology skills for development. Volunteers participate in local, regional and international projects for a period of several weeks or months, offering their skills in areas such as web or software development, system administration and content generation. The Program values in particular South-South exchanges, but also includes South-North and North-South cooperation.
Projects include Africa@home, a volunteer computing initiative involving CERN and academic institutions from Europe and Africa. Among the programs of ICVolunteers are: E-TIC.net, an information program that aims to empower local communities through the meaningful use of communication and the sharing of knowledge in a collaborative and hands-on fashion, especially in the Sahel region, MigraLingua, through which community interpreters assist migrants and GreenVoice, an communications initiative focusing on environmental education for young people. ICVolunteers closely works with the United Nations and non-governmental organizations for humanitarian, social conferences and events.