We had more than 200 volunteers spread across the country—many right where the fighting began. We had plans to scale up to 1,000 volunteers to support health services. In a matter of days, those plans collapsed. Suddenly, it wasn’t about growth. It was about survival.Care that goes both ways

UN Volunteer with UNDP, Ahmed Al-Mdalal is on the ground in Gaza. He is an engineer and monitors the distribution of fuel making sure debris removal machines keep operating and the blocked roads for ambulances and aid remain open. While another counterpart, Maysaa Al-Ajrami, an architect, gathers detailed data from four debris removal projects, documenting rubble volumes, machinery, fuel consumption, and workforce numbers, which she then uploads to the project’s dashboards.

Wesal Abu Hamad, a UN Volunteer Humanitarian Field Support Assistant with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), was in Gaza when the war erupted. 

UN Volunteers in BeijingAt China’s International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE), Jialin is a young Chinese UN Volunteer Project Analyst with UNOSSC. She organizes trainings, reviews grant proposals, and drafts policy briefs that drive sustainable development in agriculture, clean energy, and poverty reduction.