In Colombia, there are over 600 UN Volunteers supporting peace and providing humanitarian assistance. UN Volunteers assigned with IOM are now 15 percent of the total UNVs in the country. 

Carol is an Irish-funded UN Youth Volunteer with the UNDP Multi-Country Office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean serving as Assistant Gender Analyst. She majored in political science and economics and her interest in gender issues and equality led her to work in multiple organizations and other volunteer positions. Her work experience and passion for development called her to be a UN Volunteer.

In Peru, UNV partnered with two UN entities that host the highest numbers of UN Volunteers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), to carry out a talent outreach mission on the northern border of the country. 

Delrin joined the UNV team in 2021 with an assignment in the Darién, a difficult-to-reach indigenous jungle area located on the Colombia-Panama border. A daily average of between 1,000 and 1,500 migrants pass through this place, and access to drinking water is a permanent need. "UNICEF installed water treatment plants in the Darién with which approximately 40,000 liters of drinking water are currently produced per day. My task is to monitor them so that local communities and migrant populations can efficiently use that water," Delrin continues.

The Peruvian towns of Tumbes, Piura, and Lambayeque are facing a triple crisis: climate change, a dengue fever outbreak and forced migration. It is estimated that 840,000 people need humanitarian assistance after heavy rains and are at risk of a possible "El Niño" phenomenon.

Representing over 160 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, youth bring the abilities, ideas and determination to overcome the triple planetary crisis – loss of biodiversity, pollution and climate change. Volunteerism is a means for utilizing those skills, while accelerating and increasing their scope of action.