“It was stressful as I was far from my family, and we didn't know how intense the aftershocks were going to be,” recounts Cameroonian, Desiree Gertrude Etobe, an Associate Protection Officer on the challenges encountered on both personal and professional levels due to the earthquake. Professionally, rapid response was crucial.

Christophe joined the World Bank in August 2022. He has since then contributed to some 15 World Bank-funded projects, one of which, was the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Senegal. As part of the project, he published the State of the Transport Sector Report and also supported documenting new strategies for enhancing road safety in Dakar. 

Katrin Hermanek is an international UN Youth Volunteer fully funded by Switzerland. She serves as a Gender Equality Programme Analyst with UN Women in Lebanon. Her grassroots-level community service helps identify needs of women and girls. In coming up with solutions, a major emphasis is to ensure women get a decision-making role in their communities.

The journey of Ghita (27) in protection and promotion of refugees’ rights began while she was still in high school. She was selected for an internship in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was introduced to an association active in the promotion of human rights. This experience laid the foundation for her future endeavors to contribute to development and assist refugees and asylum seekers.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Health, Nutrition and Population team of the World Bank has extended several projects in Indonesia. These range from improving the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitating access to vaccines, increasing detection and treatment for tuberculosis, to finding ways in which the national health insurance system can cover the population with even more efficiency.

Landscape Restoration Project  Júlia Baena de Mesquita is an Environmental and Social Analyst with the World Bank in Burundi. She ensures that the World Bank’s social safeguards are applied to all the projects. By doing so, she guarantees that development is not done at any cost. This ranges from issues that stem from labour conditions to gender-based violence, and communities’ health and safety. 

Throughout my studies, I became interested in the interplay between social policy and economic growth. Hence, I decided to focus on the provision of quality education and how education systems impact social and economic development, especially in the context of Europe and Central Asia.  Serving as a UN Volunteer with the World Bank in line with my values: it enables me to have a real impact on improving people's access to social services, infrastructure and good jobs, as well as empowering young people. 

According to the country’s first national gender-based violence survey in 2017, at least half of Mongolian women are expected to experience some form of gender-based violence in their lifetime, and one in three women had suffered violence in the year prior.

Is this a coincidence or fate? The first Swiss UN volunteer has his office right across from the SEF and now works closely with the Human Security Department. To celebrate the completion of the 100th Swiss UN Youth Volunteer mission, we meet Lukas Heim, now a research fellow in the National Commission for the Prevention of Torture (NCPT) and responsible for mandates at the Swiss Center of Expertise in Human Rights (SCHR), to talk about his first assignment and what followed afterwards.

Collaborating with partners, coordinating with field offices, drafting project proposals, scheduling actions and deadlines – these tasks are the foundational components of a successful project. However, delivering these tasks efficiently also means analyzing the broader context in which the project unfolds to enhance positive and mitigate potential negative effects on the social fabric.