So far, more than 30,000 volunteers for 2004 Games
Slightly under six months after its launch, the Volunteers Program for the Athens 2004 Olympics has attracted over 30,000 applications, the event’s organizer, Athens 2004, announced in a statement yesterday. A total of 60,000 volunteers will be needed for the Olympiad’s requirements, and organizers are hoping to cull their preferred candidates from a pool of between 120-150,000 applications. At present, an average of 5,000 applications are being submitted each month, while the majority of these are being lodged over the Internet, the statement said. By early August, a total of 30,687 applications had been lodged, 17,495 of those over the Internet, and the remaining 13,192 in person at the Athens 2004 headquarters. Demographically, the response covers various age groups – young and old – from all over the country, as well as members of Greece’s diaspora and foreigners wishing to offer their services, the statement said. So far, female applicants have slightly outnumbered males, with a 55.6-percent majority, while young females aged between 16 and 30 were the most responsive sex-and-age group with just under 38 percent of the applications lodged. Males for the equivalent age group submitted close to 24 percent of applications. Locals submitted 62.4 percent of applications, while the feedback from Greece’s diaspora comes to 11.9 percent.
