The 2026 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report (SWVR): Volunteerism and Its Measurements arrives at a crucial time for Africa. This is not just another report to set aside; it marks a real shift in how we recognize the people who drive our progress. The 2026 SWVR puts things into perspective: every month 2.1 billion people, or one out of every three working-age adults, are out there volunteering. Africa plays a major role in this movement. For the first time, we can clearly see the scale of volunteering here: Africa has about 539 million volunteers, which is more than half of our working-age population. With a participation rate of 58.5 percent, Africa records the highest rate globally, reminding us that mutual aid is simply how communities look out for each other and get things done.

The United Nations Volunteers’ flagship publication, the State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, released its latest edition in December, unveiling the Global Index of Volunteer Engagement (GIVE)—a new compass for understanding how people give their time and spirit to the world. Its arrival has sparked conversations far beyond traditional volunteerism circles, prompting both cautious reflection and heartfelt celebration. 

“My place is where policies meet people.” For Besmira Doma, that line was never abstract. It shaped her studies, her choices, and her decision to work at the point where decisions on paper turn into change in real lives. With graduate degrees in Public Service Administration and Governance and Public Policy, she did not stop at theory. Today, as a UN Volunteer with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Albania, Besmira serves as a Youth Empowerment Officer—bringing policy down to street level, and young people into the conversation. This is her story.

Jahdiel Kossou, from Benin, serves as an international UN Volunteer with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Antananarivo—he is an Early Childhood Development Specialist. He says his work starts long before classrooms, policies, or progress reports. It starts in the first breath of life. In the fragile, decisive years when a child’s brain is forming faster than it ever will again, when nutrition, protection, stimulation, health care, and responsive caregiving quietly determine who that child will become. Jahdiel joined UNICEF because he believes that investing in children from conception to age eight is not charity—it is strategy. Not sentiment—it is nation‑building. This is where inequality begins—and where it can be undone. Here’s more from him.

At first, the room is quiet—almost guarded. On a human rights training day in Madagascar’s Sofia region, people arrive with folded arms and measured words. Local leaders, youth activists, women’s groups, community representatives. They listen. They wait. Human rights, after all, can sound like something designed elsewhere, for someone else. And days like International Women’s Day can sometimes feel symbolic—marked on calendars, discussed in speeches, distant from daily realities.
Then the silence breaks. Someone talks about land taken without consent. A woman speaks of being shut out of a decision that shapes her family’s future—her voice steady, resolute. A young person admits they don’t know where justice begins, or whether it’s meant for them at all.
The atmosphere shifts instantly. Human rights stop being theory and start being personal. Legal language collides with lived reality. Hands go up. Voices sharpen. Stories connect. People begin to see themselves inside the concepts, not outside them. “That’s the moment everything changes,” reflects Pierre Yvan Miharisoa, a national UN Volunteer from Madagascar. “That’s when my real work begins.”