The UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Mr. Ahmad Alhendawi recently spent a week visiting China at the invitation of the All-China Youth Federation.  He was joined by a joint UN delegation of senior youth experts from UNESCO, UNV, UNEP, UN Habitat, ILO, and UNFPA to advance collaboration on youth development in China.

Port au Prince, Haiti: I am an international UN Volunteer with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) engineering section, specialized in administration and finance. I have a dedicated passion for nature and the environment and have volunteered in my home country of Gambia to promote sustainable and profitable solutions to urban environmental challenges. 

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme in India, Youth Ki Awaaz (YKA) and Action/2015 are convinced that India’s young population and their spirit of volunteerism can help overcome poverty and achieve the sustainable development agenda. They are therefore constantly exploring possibilities to mobilize and engage volunteers and to give voice to the youth of the country.

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme in India, Youth Ki Awaaz (YKA) and Action/2015 are convinced that India’s young population and their spirit of volunteerism can help overcome poverty and achieve the sustainable development agenda. They are therefore constantly exploring possibilities to mobilize and engage volunteers and to give voice to the youth of the country.

Harare, Zimbabwe: When Amy Wickham, an international UN Volunteer, joined the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Zimbabwe, she didn't know what to expect. Yet this experience changed her life. "The experience and exposure that I've got since I started as a volunteer has been phenomenal", she says. "The ownership that I've been given over the projects, as well as the time and responsibility that I've been given from professionals that I've worked with has been fantastic."

Two national UN Volunteers working for a UNDP project in Zimbabwe saw their efforts pay off when the livelihood of a local community they were supporting started improving. What these two national UN Volunteeers were not expecting was that their contribution brought to them something in return that was even more valuable: a feeling of joy and a connection to other people.

N'Djamena, Chad: We are Alladoum Assidjim and Laura Rutishauser, a national UN volunteer aged 33 and an international UN volunteer from Switzerland aged 29, working together to provide Chadian youth with local volunteering opportunities. In order to do so, we are supporting the set up of Chad’s National Volunteering Programme (CNVP), with our partners the UNV programme, UNDP, the French Embassy and France Volontaires, at the request of the Chadian Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports.

When Nepal experienced a devastating earthquake on 25 April last year with the epicentre close to Kathmandu, UNV responded by rapidly recruiting about 200 national UN Volunteers, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and fielded them in such vital areas as coordination of the response effort, rubble removal and early reconstruction.

A groundbreaking partnership between the Burkina Faso Ministry of Youth and Employment, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme and France Volontaires in 2007 led to the development of the first national law on volunteerism in West Africa, and mobilized more than 13,000 youth volunteers to support national development, including more than a thousand young volunteer teachers who served in classrooms that otherwise would have been closed due to a lack of staff.

Following the momentous political transitions that swept the Arab region in recent years, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme’s groundbreaking Arab Youth Volunteering for a Better Future regional project is building trust between young people, their communities, and governments in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen.