“If we want to progress in the application of the Millennium Goals and advance in the achievement of the targets for the development of the Millennium, it will be necessary to be provided with collaboration of people from all around the world; in this respect, volunteering keeps on being a powerful and effective instrument of participation.

Volunteering on every community, or from home with the use of Internet, allows the people to carry out extraordinary tasks. This contribution is of great importance as a target to eradicate the poverty, the famine, the illnesses and the illiteracy, to fight to protect the environment of the planet or to safeguard the women from discrimination and violence.

The power of volunteering resides in their own universality, in the uncountable acts of solidarity and assistance that take place every day, both in the developed countries and in the countries in development. All the forms of volunteering are valid: only it is necessary people ready to share their time, their aptitudes or a brilliant idea.

On this International Day of the Volunteers, we exhort the governments and the civil society to create more opportunities of volunteering. We all must admit that the volunteers are doing a fundamental role in the process of development and that the power of volunteering contributes enormously to the construction of a secure and sustainable future”.

The message from Kofi Annan 2005.