Jennifer Klem, Ranjit Singh, and Tony Elton Msume have one thing in common. They are online volunteers promoting gender equality and women's empowerment through the power of technology. This is their story and how they virtually make a change for gender equality.
Jennifer Klem is from the United States of America. In 2021, she started her first assignment as an online volunteer and published two projects, UNICEF 2021 Global Gender Equality Results Report and a Gender Onboarding Brochure for the new staff in UNDP Liberia.
For UNDP Liberia, Jennifer conducted gender analysis and reviewed the inclusive governance pillar. She studied a body of documents to guide her through this process, including programme and project reports. The final result was a fully designed and visually appealing report highlighting gender outcomes and recommendations.
Jennifer took the text, read it and developed a stunning design that conveyed the message, “UNDP Liberia puts gender equality up front and center of all its activities." The design said what a thousand words could not have successfully said." -- Catherine Mgendi, Communications Specialist, UNDP Liberia.
Ranjit Singh is from India. He specializes in gender, and was a UN Volunteer for four years with the UN Resident Coordinator's Office in Georgia serving as a Joint Programming Support Officer, and then with UNHCR as an Associate Reporting Officer in Nigeria.
For his first assignment as an online volunteer, he conducted gender analysis of the UNDP country office in Liberia, In his analysis, Ranjit included recommendations on how to enhance the programme emphasizing gender responsive budgeting and gender equality.
This experience not only gave me a sense of personal and professional satisfaction, but it also boosted my confidence and added valuable experience to my resume." -- Ranjit Singh, online volunteer.
Tony Elton Msume is from Malawi. He is a graphic designer and a telecommunications engineer. He started online volunteering in 2021 while interning at UNICEF Malawi country office as a geospatial data analyst.
Tony designed a creative project for the evaluation unit at UN Women Regional Office in Dakar. His online volunteer assignment included a multi-page PDF report on the mid-term evaluation of Support of Women in in Agriculture and Sustainable Development (PAF/AgriFeD) project.
So far, in 2023, almost 83 online volunteers are contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals in the West and Central Africa region.
Online volunteers play an important role in innovation and technology for gender equality through reports, recommendations, and creative projects.
A project designed for UN Women by Tony Elton Msume, online volunteer. @ UNV West and Central Africa, 2022.
rapport evaluation agreed final - 2021 - UN Women GATE
Global-annual-results-report-2021-gender.pdf (unicef.org)