HavServe Volunteer Service Network (HavServe) is a volunteer-driven not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization that supports community-led development through volunteerism in least developed countries. We believe that volunteerism benefits both society and the individual volunteer by strengthening trust, solidarity, cooperation, and reciprocity among citizens, and by creating opportunities to empower citizens to realize their potentials and shape the direction of their communities, their country, and the world.
The name, HavServe, comes from the understanding that if you have, you serve. If you have time, you serve. If you have compassion, you serve. If you have resources, you serve. If you have knowledge, you serve. Thus, HavServe aims to draw upon the skills and talents of those that have, to serve and to help implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through volunteering their time, resources, knowledge, and investing themselves in community-led development globally.
The HavServe team is inspired by the conviction that volunteerism is a powerful means of engaging people in tackling development challenges in their individual communities and in their country as whole. Worldwide, people can contribute time, skills and knowledge through volunteer action, and these combined efforts can be a significant force to sustainable development. If development is to be effective and sustainable, the people affected by poverty must take ownership of the development of their own communities and country.
Volunteerism by millions of people will be critical to advancing the MDGs around the world. Please join HavServe as we strive to meet the MDGs in Haiti, village by village, through community-led development.
HavServe Background:
Prior to the catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, tens of thousands of villagers had migrated to the capital, Port-au-Prince, in search of economic, academic, professional, and social opportunities. After the earthquake, villagers are returning to the countryside in a mass exodus. Now those ill-equipped and neglected villages are faced with the added pressure to provide for residents as well as the returning migrants, with extremely scarce resources. Aside from exacerbating the pervasive human suffering that has gripped Haiti, the earthquake also accounts for the biggest loss of income, assets, and human resources in the country’s history. There is an urgent need to provide support to these villages.
HavServe was created to support sustainable development, one village at a time, through goal-oriented, volunteer-staffed projects aimed at empowering rural villagers. HavServe recognizes community-based development as a moral, strategic, and economic imperative and fully embraces the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as an effective benchmark for improving a country through its villages. HavServe will draw upon the principles of the Universal Declaration of Volunteering to meet the MDGs in rural villages throughout Haiti.
Please take action! Join the HavServe team in our mission to help Haiti from the bottom-up. Let us know how you would like to support Haiti!
The opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of HavServe, its volunteers, contributors, Board of Directors, and its Advisory Committee, and do not in any way reflect the views of any U.S. Government agency, international, or non-governmental organization.
