The 26th World Volunteer Conference opened on Tuesday under the theme of “Volunteering for the Common Good: Making Life Better for People and Communities” and will run until October 27 at ADNOC Business Center, Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.
The conference is the largest global gathering of volunteering experts and is held every two years. It aims to tackle many of the challenges and issues in volunteer work and highlights the culture of volunteering in promising sustainable development of societies and countries alike, WAM said.
The event is hosted jointly by the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) and Emirates Foundation, the national organization of the UAE set up by the Abu Dhabi Government to facilitate public-private funded initiatives to strengthen community resilience.
According to WAM, the conference is expected to attract around 1,000 participants from more than 100 countries, representing all the stakeholders of the volunteer community, including individual leaders, civil society organizations, government agencies, academia and businesses.
Abu Dhabi won the bid among three shortlisted cities and was selected by the IAVE to host the 26th World Volunteer Conference, making it the first capital in the Middle East to host the global conference.
