Participate in National Volunteer Day around September 21 #NVDay14

Press releases are long. I don't even know why. But you will read them if you are really interested. Or at least look for the bolded text and numbers. Otherwise, this message is pretty simple. National Volunteer Day - where many people in Ghana volunteer their skills, effort, time and money to make Ghana better around a day (or two or three) is here again. September 20-22. You can do something in your own small way. You should. You should also let us know before hand, so we promote, support, join you. Or you can join us. Interested? The details are in the press release below.

The +Ghana Volunteer Program (GVP) is a program being run by the GhanaThink Foundation, an NGO based both in Ghana and the USA. National Volunteer Day, which falls on the 21st of September is our major activity . It was instituted as part of GVP in 2013. The initiative is to get as many people as possible in Ghana to volunteer their time or do community service on the Founder’s Day Holiday. While volunteerism is not very popular and part of our society’s fabric, many individuals and organizations volunteer occasionally. National Volunteer Day is to increase these numbers and unify efforts in volunteerism in Ghana.

The mission of the +GhanaThink Foundation, a Ghana and US based NGO, is to mobilize talent and support idea generation to projects and ventures. Through our Barcamps, we have built a network of over 5500 Ghanaian change makers, doers and entrepreneurs through events in Ghana. We want to use this network and other channels to build a bigger network of volunteers in Ghana. We believe volunteerism is the heart of community development.

We want to encourage more people to do community service within Ghana. That’s the same spirit our founding fathers engendered within our citizenry. By having volunteer or community service activities around September 21, we would be cherishing the ideals of founding Ghana and joining a national effort to work for Ghana. Volunteering demonstrates initiative and hard work, two ideals that many organizations look for while hiring. We believe that by participating in NVDay, participants would be building their CVs.

We expect at least 233 different activities on the day. You can find info about these activities and more onbit.ly/nvday14. If you need more info on what to do or how to contribute to National Volunteer Day, visit the same link. Interested groups,organizations and individuals should register/RSVP at the National volunteer Day eventbrite website (nvday14.eventbrite.com). Different individuals and organizations have planned volunteer activities for September 21st. Go to http://bit.ly/nvday14 to find  about activities and  more.

You can see various photos from NVDay13 etc on the Ghana Volunteer Program Facebook & Google+ pages. Most of the promotion and adoption of Nvday13 was driven via online and social media channels with some radio and television support. 56 activities were registered on Eventbrite, mostly by individuals and groups that were organizing volunteering activities for the first time. For NVDay 2013, about 40 activities with about 300 volunteers involved happened. Their activities directly impacted the lives of thousands of people. These activities happened in +Accra, +Tema, Nsawam, +Kasoa, +Cape Coast, +Takoradi, +Kumasi, +Koforidua, Saltpond, +Tamale and +Wa. Activities ranged from skills training programs, clean up exercises, tutoring in a particular course, reading clinics for kids, blood donation drives, creating playing grounds for kids in the government schools to painting schools and faded zebra crossings. The impact on the volunteers and beneficiaries was massive and was captured on social media.

GVP has supported the volunteer work of many organizations in Ghana. It provided the recent Agribusiness bootcamp in Accra with volunteers. It also provided 23 volunteers for the Chale Wote Street Art Festival.It supported the Read Aloud Ghana campaign in March 2014 with media publicity as well. It has a calendar of volunteer activities in Ghana as well. Follow us on Twitter. Contact the team via volunteer at ghanathink dot org