Good governance is essential to public service delivery By decentralizing decision making and assuring local participation, the Devolution Project, managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, UN Women, and Kenyan national and county government offices, promotes collaboration between local communities and national public service providers.

In an effort to fight high levels of youth exclusion and vulnerability in Viet Nam, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) partnered with the Vietnamese Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Youth Union (HCYU) in 2009 to create the Strengthening the Capacity of Volunteerism for Development in Viet Nam (VDVN) project.

The joint United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme Social Innovation and Volunteerism in Uzbekistan Project is harnessing the social innovation of young people to tackle development challenges. By providing training, advocacy, and grants to young innovators UNV is helping to unlock the talent and entrepreneurial skills of Uzbek youth, many of whom previously lacked opportunities to contribute to development.

Following the devastation of tropical storm Ida in November 2009, a unique, triangular South-South partnership was initiated with the governments of Brazil and El Salvador and the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme.

A groundbreaking partnership between the Burkina Faso Ministry of Youth and Employment, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme and France Volontaires in 2007 led to the development of the first national law on volunteerism in West Africa, and mobilized more than 13,000 youth volunteers to support national development, including more than a thousand young volunteer teachers who served in classrooms that otherwise would have been closed due to a lack of staff.

Following the momentous political transitions that swept the Arab region in recent years, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme’s groundbreaking Arab Youth Volunteering for a Better Future regional project is building trust between young people, their communities, and governments in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen.

As part of the next State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, UNV commissioned a study based on original multi-country quantitative data to understand patterns of volunteer participation during the global COVID-19 pandemic, volunteer motivations and experiences, and what these might mean for people’s voluntary participation in the remainder of the Decade of Action.