Highly-qualified and experienced UNV volunteers make up significant proportions of the medical personnel attached to UN peacekeeping missions, helping keep staff fit and healthy and offering their skills to the populace too. From doctors and nurses to pharmacists, radiographers and staff counsellors, these UNV volunteers perform every medical role imaginable. Read

Juba, Sudan: Being a volunteer means serving without conditions, accepting certain sacrifices, and offering unselfishly one's talents to assist and support mission programmes. Read

Pristina, Kosovo: This was a dream came true... Way back during my boyhood in Kenya, I used to see people building schools, hospitals and so on. Upon enquiry I came to realize they were volunteers, and I would ask myself how I could be one of them. Read

Tonkolili, Sierra Leone: As Operations Advisor, I came up with an approach to strengthen the working relationship with the political parties. I proposed through the NEC that a committee should be formed, which would include three representatives from each party. The move was welcomed and with the blessings of NEC Commissioner, the Peace and Reconciliation Committee was formed... Ever since, the political parties have entered dialogue as friends. Read

Juba, Sudan: I wear two caps: I have both administrative and technical responsibilities. As the Officer-in-Charge, I am responsible for the daily running of the office... As technical staff, my daily tasking includes performing spatial analyses as part of mission spatial decision support systems. Read

Khartoum, Sudan: I realized I was making a big difference in my job. Read

Monrovia, Liberia: If you notice the white gown I wear for my own safety, it is also sponsored by Medical Centre (Star Base) in addition with a lot of lab consumables.  So my team nicknamed me 'Water Doctor'.  Now, I'm the only 'Water Doctor' at UNMIL, and I hope I'll have an opportunity to share and transfer my skills, knowledge and experiences to enlist more.  This is one of my expectations from volunteerism. Read

N'Djamena, Chad: As a UNV volunteer Best Practices Specialist at the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT), I collect lessons learned and best practices from my mission as well as other missions, and I help my colleagues connect with their peers around the world. This is how we avoid re-inventing the wheel, by benefiting from lessons learned elsewhere. Read

Monrovia, Liberia: Thinking of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech, I was never in doubt why a single man's dream was strong enough to change the entire world. It was a dream backed with an undying passion... I knew I had a dream too. It was a dream of equal access to safe drinking water and improved public health outcomes for the world's poor. Read

Dili, Timor-Leste: There comes a time in your life that, for personal or professional reasons, you need your work to count more than the number of drunk drivers, or chest pains seen in one hour... When you are on a personal and professional path that includes volunteer work, that path is never complete without the UN, so I volunteered with UNV simply because it made sense. Read