Reaching out to the most remote parts of Kyrgyzstan, UN Volunteers are helping some 30,000 people to organize and become an effective force in the community. As part of the National Poverty Alleviation Programme, UN Volunteers are supporting individual initiatives such as micro-loans to generate income and improve livelihoods as well as communal schemes, like building roads to better access farm lands.

One of these UN Volunteers is Himia Suerkulova, serving in her native Jalal-Abad province, in the south-west of the country, once part of the ancient silk route and now one of the country’s poorest regions. Himia’s local knowledge has ensured that the programmes’ activities reach the most isolated communities, even during long winter months. Trekking kilometres up the mountain to reach them, Himia helps these communities improve goat-breeding techniques as their basic means of subsistence. Her work has earned her national and regional recognition, including an Award by the President of the Republic for contributions to development, and the Jalal-Abad government’s Best Volunteer of the Province Diploma.

In Safawi, a village in the desert area of Jordan’s border with Iraq, UNV support to Jordan’s first Information Technology Community Centre ensures that ICT serves the needs of this Bedouin community. UN Volunteer Jenan Shafiq, a Jordanian gender specialist serving under the United Nations Information Technology Services (UNITeS) initiative*, encourages women to use the centre for distance learning and to network with women in other Arab countries. Addressing the limited medical infrastructure locally available, Jenan also assists mothers, who traditionally deal with health problems in the family, to access health information on the web and e-mail questions to doctors in other towns. “ The part of this project that has made us the proudest,” says Jenan, “is the extent to which women, especially in remote areas, when given the right tools, can do wonders in improving their lives and those of their families and communities.” The success of the centre has prompted the establishment of another 75 throughout Jordan.

Recognizing personal and tenure insecurity as one of the factors contributing to urban poverty, UNV helps address urban violence through volunteer action in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo. In addition to engaging groups at risk in constructive alternatives such as vocational training and sports, UN Volunteers have helped set up youth support centres managed by local volunteers and supported by a network of over 160 Volontaires de Quartier, the majority of whom are women.

In the South Pacific Ocean islands of Samoa, UNV supports some 2,300 rural people with physical and mental disabilities in the first project of its kind in the country. Living in rural communities, UN Volunteers are helping increase understanding of disabled people’s needs, setting up support groups for parents and families to network with each other and working with the government to identify and develop inclusive legislation and policies. Addressing the challenge of 90 per cent unemployment among people with disabilities, UN Volunteer Penelope Maddock, a New Zealander of Samoan heritage, helps create income-generating activities by coordinating training in basket and hat making, mat weaving and organic farming techniques. Working with UN Volunteer Pitofau Sioasi Gale, a native of the islands skilled at sign language, she also organizes workshops in signing for deaf people and their families and friends.