Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF) relies heavily on people who are prepared to devote time and effort to the cause – without this most generous gift we could never have achieved anything like what we have over the years. We salute all volunteers but we are especially keen to support our own people on this special day, International Volunteers Day (IVD).

On this day our major announcement is that we have been accepted as members of Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) which is an umbrella organisation consisting of economic development organizations that integrate highly skilled volunteers into programs mainly funded through the USAID program. VEGA is involved in many and varied projects that involve one or more of the member organizations and as we engage we believe this will create many opportunities. We aim to collaborate with all of the members and to be their ‘aquaculture’ experts.

The following actions have been undertaken, or are planned, as a result of the energetic suggestions from our volunteers re IVD. We:

• have established a Twitter account @AwFVols and invite everyone to communicate through this to see the latest information and news;
• request that all people connected to AwF take a photograph on IVD (5 December) and send it to us to share on the website;
• ask our Volunteers to provide us a single word or phrase that means ‘volunteer’ to them, e.g. ‘giving’, ‘satisfaction’ or ‘Yeah!’ From all the input we will create a word cloud to add to the website, giving us a combined sense of everyone’s contribution.
• are creating a Volunteer noticeboard on the website;
• have utilized our affiliation with the World Aquaculture Society and now have links to their employment information on our website and encourage volunteers looking for full time work to use that connection;
• are planning a newsletter (run by the Volunteers Committee and Secretariat) for volunteers to contribute their stories and experiences in the coming year.

AwF will be holding a Board Meeting and a Session at the Aquaculture America 2015 in New Orleans between 19 and 22 February so we look forward to meeting lots of old and new friends at that event. Our President, Roy Palmer, will be updating everyone and will hopefully have some news about future projects which we are working hard to achieve.
Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF)