I still remember the smell of smoke.
In 2014, shortly after I graduated from university, my hometown of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine became a frontline. One day, I saw photos on social media: my apartment building had been hit several times and burned for two days before the flames were extinguished. Part of the building collapsed. I did not know how badly our apartment had been damaged. I recall my helplessness, emptiness. The future I had planned suddenly felt irrelevant. Almost three years later, we received government compensation. The building was eventually demolished. We stayed in the region. Many people asked why. The answer was simple: this was my home.

“I left Namibia at 15 years old and went into exile. We were refugees during those years.” Kirsti Mukwiilongo was a teenager when she left her home in Namibia. It was the height of the liberation struggle, and safety lay beyond the border. Like many others, she moved between countries—Angola, then Zambia—finishing secondary school as a refugee. Those years marked her for life. “We were assisted by other countries, by other people,” she recalls. The experience stayed with her—shaping how she responds and what matters to her. “That gave me compassion. It gave me purpose.”

For more than half a century, several traditional development partners have been among the most consistent backers of global solidarity through the United Nations Volunteers (UNV), quietly supporting, funding and sustaining it. Since UNV’s creation in 1970, traditional development partners have remained among its most consistent supporters. For example, Europe’s imprint on UNV is visible in leadership, participation, and policy influence. Four of UNV’s ten Executive Coordinators have come from European countries. Between 2007 and 2025, around eleven per cent of all UN Volunteers originated from the European Union or traditional European donor countries. European governments have also consistently spoken in support of volunteerism at the UNDP Executive Board and backed global commitments such as the declaration of 2026 as the International Volunteer Year.

When Kei Tanaka arrived at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) field office in Uganda as an Associate Livelihood and Economic Inclusion Officer, there was no confirmed budget for livelihood activities. Her task was clear: expand economic opportunities for refugees and host communities.

As we approach 2030, the global community is at a critical juncture in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While progress on many Sustainable Development Goals has been uneven, a powerful "means of implementation" is often hiding in plain sight: volunteerism. According to the  2026 State of the World's Volunteerism Report (SWVR), an estimated 2.1 billion people—34.5 percent of the global working-age population—volunteer every single month.