One of the key aspects of online volunteering is its inclusiveness. Because it does not involve any costs or travel, online volunteering enables anyone from anywhere in the world to share their skills for the benefit of peace and development. It offers opportunities for people with disabilities, who may not have the possibility to travel to another country, to volunteer their time, skills and expertise and to make a difference helping development organizations around the globe.

The Online Volunteering service is supporting a research project on ways to facilitate volunteering for peace and development for people with disabilities. A summary of the project will be featured in a future issue of the newsletter.

We know that a number of you have chosen to indicate in your user profiles that you consider yourselves to be people with disabilities. If you have a disability, volunteered online to support an organization through the Online Volunteering service, and would like to contribute to this project, please send an email to info@onlinevolunteering.org. Tell us about your online volunteering experiences. We look forward to hearing from you!

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2. TIP: How to apply as an online volunteer

Unlike the application process for UNV volunteers, candidates have to apply for specific opportunities, and applications are not pre-screened by UNV. You register an account on the Online Volunteering service website and apply directly to opportunities posted by organizations registered with the service. Applying for an online volunteering opportunity is very much like applying for a job: anyone above the age of 18 who believes he/she has the skills and interest to support an organization with the task outlined in the opportunity can submit an application. This gives everyone a chance to participate, and gives organizations the freedom of choice to find volunteers with the kind of profile they are looking for. We offer a few tips to guide you through the application process:

What kinds of opportunities are published on the website?
The Online Volunteering service is demand-driven and, apart from ensuring opportunities’ compliance with the opportunity criteria, it has no influence on the tasks, development topics or duration of opportunities published on the website. Opportunities reflect the needs of the organizations using the service at a specific moment. Some organizations may be looking for support with a project for which they will find suitable volunteers within a few days. Other organizations may leave opportunities published for longer periods of time when the tasks are more complex and require a particular volunteer profile and/or large number of volunteers that may not be quick to find. All opportunities that are published on the website indicate that the organization welcomes new applications. Once the required volunteers have been identified, the organization removes the opportunity from the Online Volunteering service website.

What are the steps of the application process?
Your first step is to find an opportunity that interests you and for which you are confident you have the required skills. Use the search filters or keyword search on the Opportunity Search page to find an opportunity that is right for you. Study the opportunity description carefully to make sure you meet the outlined requirements and can commit the time indicated. Make sure that your application contains enough information to convince the organization that you are an ideal candidate for the task. It is always a good idea to attach your CV. Wait for the organization to review your application and to contact you. You may receive more detailed questions about your qualifications, or be asked to submit work samples or do a short test as part of the application. The organization will inform you whether or not your application was successful. If you are selected, make sure you clarify the deliverables, process and next steps with the organization and agree on a schedule.

What happens if I do not hear about the status of my application?
It may take the organization some time to review your application. If you do not hear back from the organization for more than two weeks, you can send an email to the organization. You will find the organization’s email address in the My Opportunities page of your account. Expand the opportunity for which you applied and click the Opportunity Administrator link. If you still do not receive a response from the organization, and you no longer want to support the organization, you can withdraw from the opportunity. This will trigger an automated message informing the organization that you are no longer available for the task. Another option is to submit feedback in which you indicate that you did not work on the opportunity and did not hear from the organization. If you decide to share the feedback with the organization, it will be informed that its behaviour is perceived as negative by volunteers and will be more responsive towards future applicants.

What is UNV’s role in the application process?
UNV is not involved in the selection of online volunteers. UNV does not screen nor select applicants. It is the responsibility of the organization publishing the opportunity. As a result online volunteers do not have a contract with UNV and therefore are not considered UNV volunteers but online volunteers for that organization. UNV offers a website to connect you with organizations, as well as tools and guidance to support your effective online collaboration with them. UNV monitors user satisfaction to make online volunteering an efficient and rewarding experience. It is therefore important that, in addition to providing feedback about your collaboration with organizations, you inform UNV in case you encounter any problems (e.g. organizations making inappropriate requests).

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Professional Education Organization International (PEOI) delivers online university level courses free of charge to over 6,100 registered students from 196 countries. All activities are managed by around 3,800 online volunteers from 142 countries. PEOI's volunteers have created complete online university level textbooks, developed assignments, reading lists, cases or lab projects, class discussions, as well as review and test questions. Some courses contain additions from illustrators and/or audio specialists, and from IT specialists who devise stylesheets, write programming scripts, or debug php, html or xml code. A large number of translators work on making the courses available in PEOI's ten operating languages. PEOI currently has about a dozen courses completed, and a few hundred under construction.

PEOI’s founder John Petroff, a retired professor of finance and economics, asks volunteers to register on the PEOI website to access the course development tools. PEOI places great value on volunteer management and disseminates a monthly newsletter to keep its volunteers abreast of the latest developments, new volunteers, highlights and other issues of interest. Registration also facilitates group interaction and team spirit within each one of PEOI's disciplines, helping volunteers to exchange ideas on how to develop the courses in their respective disciplines.

“At each step, control of quality is imperative to make sure that the end product is truly a university level course. While it would be desirable that all PEOI's volunteers are university professors, it is also not realistic. There are plenty of tasks that graduate students can do such as translating, writing test questions or assignments. The result of this combined effort is something that PEOI's volunteers can really be proud of and that can make a difference in the lives of many students,” John Petroff says.

Minh Vo from Viet Nam holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree and works as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company in the USA. She joined PEOI in 2006 and developed two online courses, ‘Pharmacokinetics – Concepts and Applications’ and ‘Clinical Pharmacokinetics’. She also acts as board member for the organization. “It was a great collaboration with much assistance and guidance from the director of PEOI. I also have a great team. Our virtual working relationship is not much different from a face-to-face relationship. There are no obstacles with online communication tools (e.g., email, discussion forum) to accomplish our goals.”

Punam Kumar from India completed her Master’s degree in Botany and is a mother and housewife. She has been volunteering for PEOI since 2007 and created the ‘Introduction to Botany’ course, an equivalent of more than 450 pages of textbook material and 187 images and drawings showing the inner features of plants, cells and processes. With the help of her son, she learned HTML code in order to design the tables, place style tags, and create lists and links to other pages. She was drawn to PEOI’s mission to support free and open education and enjoyed the learning experience of her assignment: “It enabled me to contribute and spread my knowledge from the confines of my household as well as helped expand my own knowledge base.”

Dennis Dantic, a Filipino expatriate living in the UK, has a Master of Public Health and works as team leader at a centre for people with mental health issues. Having joined PEOI in January 2010, Dennis volunteers an average of six hours per week to lead the development of the Public Health course, manage the recruitment process of online volunteers for the writing of public health courses and coordinate the development of two courses, ‘Foundations of Public Health’ and ‘Biostatistics’. “I wish that more people would become part of this innovative and exciting trend to help people using the power of technology and the Internet. This is a very rewarding endeavour. There are so many things to do, so many things to learn.”