I recently travelled to Mbire with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Zimbabwe communications team. As a UN Volunteer, my job was to help tell the stories of women and families we met. We were documenting the impact of a One-stop Centre provided by UNDP in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Gender Commission. The initiative started in response to alarming findings from a national inquiry on child marriages and abuse of young girls, including those with disabilities. 

We had all answered the call to serve in the historic United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), a political mission, established by the UN Security Council on June 11, 1999. Our task: to help organize and conduct a UN-sponsored referendum in which the Timorese people would vote on whether to remain under Indonesian autonomy or pursue full independence. 

One hot afternoon in Harare, in the course of my work, I sat down with Debbie Chinochema, a young community member and beneficiary of UNICEF programmes in Zimbabwe. She looked me in the eye, smiled shyly, and shared her story with me. Debbie lives with HIV. But more than that, she’s a fighter. A volunteer. A voice.

 As a 17-year-old, I travelled to the United States on an educational exchange programme and my main motivation was to play baseball and experience American culture.I met a lot of other people from Africa and Asia as well as Europe and I was taken aback and then impressed by their passion and motivation to support their villages and communities back home.

Meet Rafiatu Umarayi Alhassan and Samuel Peprah Bekoe. Both are UN Volunteer Field Coordinators and part of Young Africa Innovates (YAI) with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ghana, a bold initiative helping young people across all 16 regions of the country turn their ideas into solutions.