To date in 2019, 33 UN Volunteers have been serving in Kazakhstan, 25 of them on national and eight on international assignments. They are placed with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Children's Fund, UN Population Fund, UN Refugee Agency, UN Resident Coordinator's Office, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and UN Environment Programme. An additional 14 Kazakhstanis serve on international assignments abroad.

At present, Alen is working as a Procurement Assistant in a UNDP-GEF project on “Derisking Renewable Energy Investment,” which is connected with SDG #7: “Affordable and clean energy.” The significance of this project can be gauged from the fact that 40% of heat production in Kazakhstan is generated from centralized district heating systems that run on combined heat and power plants (typically coal-fired).  The remaining heat is produced by heat-only boilers, which often have low efficiencies.

For the last seven months, Oleksandra has been leading the communications team at the UNICEF Kazakhstan country office. This involves a lot of tasks, including implementation of the Communication and Advocacy Strategy, namely producing digital content and facilitation of all public events.

The Soviet Union’s programme of aid to Africa, closed after the dissolution of the USSR, was recognised for sending talented professionals abroad. As the programme’s activities gradually came to an end, many professionals returned home to their families. Dr. Teljan Jounisbekov, however, felt the need to continue serving the people of Burundi. He opted to remain in the country and pursue his passion, a decision that was valued by the Ministry of Health of Burundi and supported by the offer of an extension of his contract. Dr.

The training, which occurred between 31 October and 3 November, included interactive sessions, group work, case studies, role modelling and competency design to better understand the complexity of sustainable development and to identify comparative advantages of volunteerism in implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Astana, Kazakhstan : During my one-year assignment in Kazakhstan, there were a few questions with which I became familiar. One of these questions was why I chose to come to Kazakhstan. Being a statistician, I must say that it could be called a chain of random events. I received the announcement of the volunteer position one week before the application deadline, just when I was about to finish my dissertation.  To my surprise, almost everything in the terms of reference matched to my background.

Astana, Kazakhstan: The only things I knew about Kazakhstan were from a comedy film, and also that it was a huge country. This was before that evening when I opened my email to discover an offer for a United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme’s assignment at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Kazakhstan.

Astana, Kazakhstan : Through a state programme, the Government of Kazakhstan is making efforts to encourage the repatriation of ethnic Kazakhs from abroad. The integration of repatriates into society is a challenge due to language and cultural barriers, lack of basic resources and legal and social support.