Olympics fever must be contagious.
Record numbers of people have put their hands up to volunteer
for next year's Games, and officials predict that numbers will keep
climbing.
"By Monday, about 556,000 people from home and abroad have
applied," Liu Jian, director of the Beijing Olympic Games Volunteer
Work Coordination Group Office, said yesterday.
Liu encouraged all Beijing citizens to volunteer for the Games
as it would be an enriching experience.
About 100,000 volunteers are needed for the Beijing Olympic
Games and Paralympics Games in 2008, said John Floretta, United
Nations Volunteers (UNV) Program Manager in China, citing official
statistics released earlier this year.
Of them, about 95 percent will come from Beijing, while the rest
will be drawn from other parts of China and the world, he said.
"That left only a handful of vacancies for the international
volunteers, or about 1,000," Floretta said.
The remarks were made yesterday at the signing ceremony of a
three-year project to strengthen volunteering in China through the
Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
The US$1.4 million project will provide training to about 10,000
Olympic volunteer leaders and organize volunteer-led environmental
awareness campaigns.
"Like the Olympics, volunteering is essentially and profoundly
optimistic," Ad de Raad, executive coordinator of UNV said
yesterday. UNV and the United Nations Development Program in China
jointly funded and organized the project.
"The world will see the remarkable dedication of volunteers at
the Games next summer. Through this project, we are hoping to
illustrate how the ingenuity, solidarity and creativity of
volunteers can contribute to achieving the nation's development
targets."
(China Daily July 26, 2007)