UN Youth Volunteers, who receive a monthly living allowance and a benefits package, can be impactful resources to support monitoring and evaluation efforts.

"This has been the most useful and fun training I have been to," says Edgar Kiliba, UN Youth Volunteer Web and Social Media Communications Associate for the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office in Tanzania.  Edgar was one of 17 UN Youth Volunteers who participated in the Assignment Preparation Training in Nairobi and are being deployed to five countries on the African continent.

In the pursuit of its mandate to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, UNICEF recognizes that youth over 18 years old have proven to be key advocates and change makers. UNICEF has historically engaged modest numbers of youth volunteers in their advocacy and programmatic work. The organization is now looking to strengthen this by engaging youth in a systematic and formalized programme to deliver results for children.

Benin UNICEF Youth Advocate for Monitoring and Evaluation Cotonou, Benin Comoros (the) UNICEF Youth Advocate for Partnership, Advocacy and Reporting Moroni, Comoros Congo (the)

Ms Valerie Crab, Programme Specialist and Innovation Lead, has been working with two national UN Youth Volunteers and one national UN Volunteer in the twenties on innovation, such as the U-Report Indonesia, a polling system that uses social media to help deliver youth opinions to policymakers. “I think that UN Volunteers should be recruited to bring an added value to a programme that otherwise we wouldn’t have access to,” she says. On the value of having a UN Youth Volunteers in her team, she describes,

Algeria UNICEF Youth Advocate for Technology, Youth and Innovation Algiers, Algeria Angola UNICEF Youth Advocate for Social Protection Luanda, Angola

Some 103 UN Volunteers served with UNAIDS in 38 countries over the past 10 years.  Supporting the mandate of UNAIDS, they have been working towards stopping new HIV infections, ensuring that everyone living with HIV has access to treatment, protecting and promoting human rights and producing data for decision-making. 

How do you see the partnership between UN Women and UN Volunteers and why is this important?

In the process of finding a right programming partner, I was able to get in touch with UNLIREC- the Regional Center for Peace, Disarmament and Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, part of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs.

The initiatives awarded under the Youth Volunteering Innovation Challenge featured youth engaging volunteers to address social issues with the help of private sector volunteering – the SAP staff members who provided mentorships were also volunteers.  The three-month mentorships enabled grantees to scale up their projects in the areas of environment, people with disabilities, and women’s economic empowerment within urban contexts, with a focus on leveraging volunteering for the localization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).