As a young woman, I have always been motivated to create spaces for women to participate in decision making and take on leadership roles. I want to help eliminate barriers to gender equality in my country and region and accelerate achieving 50-50 by 2030 globally. --Ekin Su Yilmaz, UN Youth Volunteer with UN Women, Turkey

African countries and WHO are redoubling their efforts to strengthen people’s health and well-being in a region with some of the highest rates of disease in the world. With the Africa Women Health Champions, UNV and WHO will recruit early-career women professionals to promote health across the 47 countries where WHO is present on the continent.

Q.  What is your take on gender equality in the region?

Being volunteer gave me, as an indigenous woman, the opportunity to be an agent of change, coherent with my community’s cosmovision. Volunteering is an ancestral treasure that should be transmitted from generation to generation. This guarantees good living, with respect and harmony between humanity and nature. Let’s boost our communities to gain awareness of gender equality, as a pre-condition to progress towards sustainable development. --Ingrid Sierra, UN Volunteer with UN Women

Viktoriia Unuchko started as a UN Youth Volunteer Administrative and Communications Assistant. She supports the Sustainable Development and Environment Portfolio within the UNDP/Global Environment Facility project "Removing barriers to increase investment in energy efficiency in public buildings in Ukraine through the ESCO modality in small and medium-sized cities".

This undertaking aims to develop young women’s leadership capacities to become agents of change for their communities, contributing to social cohesion. I strongly believe in the solidarity and connection between women. Young women need just a bit of support to experience big changes. --Aleksandra Jovanović

Growing up in an open and forward-thinking environment, I am grateful for the fact that no one ever told me what to do, or what not to do, simply because I was a girl. For me, women are definitely strong enough to play crucial roles beyond the stereotypes that define them otherwise. My gender identity has, and should, never limit my potentials or aspirations.

I became a UN Volunteer because I want to offer my skills to make the world a better place. This experience has not only been a platform to gain professional experience, meet and work with people from different cultures or improve my communication and social skills. It has also changed my life. 

Why volunteering? Because I strongly believe in the values of volunteering. To me volunteerism is an authentic form of expressing motivation; it is an occasion to get deeply invested in a mission, to be able to contribute with our skills and competencies where really needed. Volunteering is about being part of the change, it’s an occasion for our human side to prevail upon our personal interests.

The African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) is transitioning from peacekeeping projects to peacebuilding and development. Through its Governance and Community Stabilization Section (GCSS), UNAMID is supporting Darfuri civilians with a wide number of projects aimed at increasing security and reduce violence.