Prishtina, Kosovo:  From my very first day working as a UN Youth Volunteer as part of UNDP’s Inclusive Growth Team in Kosovo, I started to realize that all the statistics showing high levels of unemployment, particularly among youth, are hiding the true and disturbing extent of this issue. With more than 35 percent of young Kosovars neither having a job nor going to school, they grow impatient, pessimistic about their chances to have a decent life, and frustrated with not being heard.

During the first UNV Partnerships Forum that took place in Bonn, on September 30th and October 1st 2014, eight UN Volunteers were given the floor to share their experience as UN Volunteer. In this video, Sathaboramana Kheang, National UN Volunteer from Cambodia tells about her commitment volunteering for the LGBT community rights.

Volunteering is an effective avenue for creating constructive partnerships between nations, communities and individuals and between governments, civil society and the private sector. The role volunteerism plays in making development genuinely people centered should be properly recognized.

Quito, Ecuador: As a UN Youth Volunteer in Gender Analysis, assigned to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office of the Resident Coordinator in Quito, Ecuador, I support and advise the Resident Coordinator and the United Nations Country Team on gender-related advocacy, communications and resource mobilization.

Volunteerism has been a key driver of the global environmental movement, mobilizing communities all over the world to help them to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse environmental situations. When well facilitated, volunteerism can help communities use their own resources to maintain core structures under extreme climate events or changing environmental conditions without requiring significant external aid.

The UNDP Equator Initiative brings together the United Nations, governments, civil society, businesses and grassroots organizations to acknowledge and advance local sustainable development solutions for people, nature and resilient communities. As local and indigenous groups across the world chart a path towards sustainable development, the Equator Initiative recognizes their efforts by honouring them with the biennial Equator Prize.

Since 8 November 2013, when Category 5 Typhoon Haiyan made a direct hit on 36 provinces of the Philippines, there has been a worldwide response by aid agencies, governments and civil society to help the densely populated nation of 92 million people recover. The latest Government estimates (at 20 November 2013) indicate that 13.25 million people were affected by Typhoon Haiyan, including over 4.4 million who were displaced.  More than four million people are living outside evacuations, while 387,450 are living in 1,552 centres.

When UNDP Administrator Helen Clark toured China on a mission in late August, two national UN Volunteers greeted her during her field visit to a pilot sustainable forest management project site in Koutou, a village near Beijing. 

Kigali, Rwanda: In cooperation with 22 other African countries, the One UN in Rwanda held consultations in order to formulate a nationally owned post-2015 development agenda. The objective of the consultations was to stimulate an inclusive, bottom-up debate on the post-2015 development agenda. The idea was thus to facilitate a visioning process, which is based on people’s experiences and ideas for the future of the world they want to live in.

From May to December 2012, UN Volunteers in Juba deployed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) through the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) were active in an Emergency Return and Reintegration Operation of South Sudanese Returnees.   The two part operation successfully achieved the emergency return of 12,000 returnees and the emergency reintegration of 1,600 returnees to South Sudan.