Santa Catarina, Brazil: World Environment Day is widely unknown in Brazil. A Brazilian UNV volunteer is working to turn this around.

Her aim is to help stimulate civil society to join forces and assume responsibility for environmental preservation, and to increase knowledge about the negative impacts our daily behaviour can have. Read

Sao Paolo, Brazil: A volunteer working with UNV under the Seniores Italia programme has been deploying his commercial expertise in Latin America to help people set their small businesses on the path to profit. Read

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: In Brazil, events in four major cities marked both International Volunteer Day and a volunteer week. Organizations and key people from across Brazilian society got involved: there were more than 70 partners; 200,000 e-mails were sent and 1,900 volunteers in 337 cities participated in at least one of the 50 volunteer assignments linked to the volunteer week. Read

Carapicuíba, Brazil: UNV and its partners in Brazil are harnessing school volunteers to raise awareness of nutrition and Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number one: 'Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger'. Read

New York, USA: A UN General Assembly committee has adopted a new UN resolution that calls on governments to mobilize support for volunteerism research and asks the UN system to integrate volunteerism into its programmes. Read