The past year has been a busy one for Australian Business Volunteers (ABV) as they celebrated 30 years of providing skilled, volunteer expertise to developing and emerging nations with an outstanding total of 7000 assignments completed in 18 countries.
A series of celebratory events were held in six states across the 2011 to gather past and present volunteers and staff to celebrate ABV’s success and pass on gratitude. Volunteers were awarded certificates of achievement. Michael Lynch, ABV’s CEO also spoke about the future vision of the organisation at these well attended events.
Over the 30 years, ABV has established itself as a preferred provider of expert volunteers with the proven ability to deliver an array of capacity building solutions from its unique repertoire of courses and programs.
The ABV approach is based on the principle that practical work skills training is the best form of aid that can be provided. It enables clients to run their businesses or organisations more effectively with the benefits flowing through to the larger community.
A selection of the countries that ABV have operated in include Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Philippines, Lao PDR, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, China and India. A vast array of diverse projects have been undertaken – from large projects like the drafting of regulations for the new Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) to smaller business concerns, such as assisting a flower grower in Papua New Guinea to learn about the fundamentals of business operations.
ABV have also partnered more recently with global IT giant, IBM to facilitate their corporate social responsibility program, known as the Corporate Services Corps which assist in nurturing and developing IBM’s top two per cent of leaders and has been named as the number one corporate leadership program by US Fortune magazine.
ABV is now extending this side of the business with current programs including PNG Ports Corporation Limited, Solomon Islands National Provident Fund (SINPF) and Vanuatu National Provident Fund (VNPF). These projects provide not only business acumen to the recipients but allow the participants to develop their leadership skills, providing huge benefits for the corporation.