Some 200 Online Volunteers supported an awareness campaign highlighting the impact of climate change on health, water, and food safety, managing chronic illnesses, and infection prevention during Arba’in pilgrimage in Karbala, one of the world's largest religious gatherings.
The campaign marked International Youth Day and was made possible through a partnership with the Iraqi Ministry of Health and the United Nations entities, including the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Volunteers, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization.
More than 4,000 local volunteers distributed informational materials to the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, while Online Volunteers added to the campaign’s outreach through social media. The posts in mass quantities relayed health and climate-related messages reaching over 530,000 people on social platforms throughout Iraq.
UNV's Online Volunteering was a vital part of this widespread social media outreach. Online Volunteers' timed posting of relevant messages across various platforms, monitoring the campaign, and collecting analytics to measure the outreach.
At the end of the campaign in August 2024, hundreds of thousands of people received good health and well-being guidelines for cases of acute need such as preventing heatstrokes, food poisoning, and other illnesses.
In 2023, there were more than 14,000 requests posted for Online Volunteers from UN entities, Member States and the civil society. Please click on UNV's Online Volunteering to get more information.