Covid hit. Everything shut down. I had a job in Egypt but wanted an international perspective, so I started looking for opportunities, and then one day I landed in Somalia. It was April 2021 and amidst the ongoing unrest in the country around that time, I thought to myself – my international volunteer experience is going to end before it begins. A feeling of risk started to settle in. I made sure that my runaway bag was ready.

I am the focal point of UPSHIFT with UNICEF. which aims at youth social innovation.  

With nearly ten years in the United Nations system and some eight years working directly with vulnerable refugee and asylum-seeking populations, I value my service to UNHCR's international protection mandate.  UNHCR in Somalia works with government and stakeholders to provide humanitarian assistance, and advance peace and development in priority areas of return and reintegration.

Everyone has the power to make a difference in the world. Driven by this conviction, I started my UN Volunteer assignment with the UN's Refugee Agency, UNHCR in Somalia. The humanitarian context grapples with multiple displacement complexities.  I am stationed in Hargeisa in Somaliland. I am deeply involved in the collection, management, and analysis of data on persons of concern, including asylum seekers, refugees, returnees, and internally displaced people. 

Scaling up education efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo Born and raised in a small village in Northern Sumatera, Indonesia, Astrini Simanjuntak witnessed stark inequalities in her community in terms of access to basic services, particularly among women and girls. This pushed her to pursue a master’s degree in sociology, majoring in gender.

Communications are a vital element of humanitarian assistance. As system-wide coordination took shape, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Somalia expanded its public information campaign on drought response and strategized new ways of informing people about its operations – both to make the public aware of the UN’s efforts and to provide information on where, when and how communities could get help themselves if affected by the drought.