It is a crisp Monday morning in September 2023. The bus from East Brunswick, New Jersey, starts its journey towards the Port Authority terminal in New York. I am about to begin my first day as the new Chief of the Operational Support and Quality Assurance Branch at the Policy and Strategy Division of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Just as the bus transports me from point A to B, I am whisked away by a train of thought.

To get back on track, the report highlighted that urgent actions are needed to change course and reimagine our futures. These actions must be collective, strategic and evidence based.     

The Community UN Volunteers were selected from 22 unions under Bandarban and Rangamati districts representing the marginalized group of ethnic minorities descending from tribal groups in the hard-to-reach terrains of Hill District Regions - 58% women. The volunteers began their assignments in December 2023 to support the multi-donor Local Government Initiative on Climate Change (LoGiC).

Through the UNDP Transitional Justice project funded by the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, UNDP South Sudan has been collaborating with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the Greater Bahr El Ghazal; Greater Equatoria and Greater Upper Nile areas to ensure that the voices of South Sudanese are included and heard in all processes. The CSOs have been using their communication channels to provide information about the transitional justice mechanisms to communities of victims and survivors of conflict.

The high-level gathering convened more than 450 onsite participants and more than 3000 online viewers. They included representatives from the Government, UN partners, members of the Diplomatic Corps, Volunteer Involved Organizations, academia, influencers, and volunteers who came together to recognize the spirit of volunteerism in shaping a better world.

Barry’s driving motivation to become a UN Volunteer stems from his proud South African roots and lived experience. He witnessed, firsthand, the growing pains of the newly democratized rainbow nation under the inspirational leadership of Nelson Mandela. As a senior civil servant during the post-Apartheid era, he was pivotal in the reconstruction and development of a new government. Decades later, this is a repetitive theme at the core of Barry’s DNA.

Collaborating with people with Down syndrome is very rare or almost never happens in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Non-governmental organizations estimate that slightly more than a thousand people with Down syndrome live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while only three to four of them are permanently employed.

Vangel joined UNICEF already equipped with a strong set of skills and understanding of social inclusion issues: his educational background, his previous experience in the private sector and with NGOs and his work at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy had provided him with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by persons with disabilities and the importance of changes at the policy and system levels.

Nazlı is a passionate Turkish volunteer who discovered her love for voluntarism during community service projects, where she tutored at a village school. With her background in teaching English and a Master’s in Social Policy, Nazlı’s dream was to combine her desire to serve #foreverychild and her evidence-generation skills. She would later describe volunteering as “devotion, sharing and impactful”.

When Teenari Tekeraoi (Kiribati) began her assignment in June 2023, she was the first international UN Youth Volunteer from the Small Island Developing States in the Pacific. She joined the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) as a Sustainable Development Monitoring Assistant, supporting Fiji, Kiribati and Tuvalu in reviewing and monitoring their national development progress.