The Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will officially inaugurate the first international conference on 'Volunteerism and the Millennium Development Goals' here on December 5. This was disclosed by Dr Nasim Ashraf, Minister of State and Chairman National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) and chiefs of United Nations Development Programmes in Pakistan at a press conference here on Thursday.
The volunteerism conference has been organised by Pakistan's National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme.
Dr Nasim Ashraf said that a network of 80,000 registered and 40,000 trained volunteers at the district level has been established nationally by NCHD in order to co-ordinate activities for an organised voluntary action.
This is a crosscutting programme whose objective is to provide support to education and health programmes through volunteer corps at the national level. This unprecedented national movement will mobilise 100,000 men and women from all walks of life to extend support to social interventions at the grassroots level, he added.
National Volunteer Corps (NVC) works for community development, he said, adding the international conference on 'Volunteerism and the Millennium Development Goals' will focus on the actions needed to promote and advance voluntary contributions to achieve the eight 'Millennium Development Goals'.
Eighth 'Millennium Goals' are focused on eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.
While giving the details of the conference, Dr Nasim Ashraf said that about 200 people would attend the international conference including government officials, parliamentarians, civil society representatives, volunteers involving organisations, UN officials and students.
He said that role of volunteerism in helping to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is the theme of the conference to mark the international volunteer day.
He informed that result of the international conference is expected to serve as inputs for reporting to the 60th session of the UN General Assembly in 2005 on progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and ultimately raising the standard of poor and marginalised societies in developing countries.
The NCHD chairman further said that a key element of the implementation strategy of NCHD is the volunteerism and community participation to ensure sustainability of intervention.
According to him Pakistan has become the first country in the developing world to set up a national volunteer corps for achievement of MDGs of poverty alleviation and human development.