With a Doctorate in Business Administration, Sam joined UNV in 2013, bringing with him extensive experience and expertise in project management, marketing, and agro-enterprise development. Reflecting on his journey, he says, "Volunteering has been my passion since my youth."

At 25 years of age, I was a teacher in Australia, yearning to experience something new. Out of the blue, I was offered an opportunity to teach at a missionary school in central Liberia. I remember going to a nearby library to check where Liberia was in the atlas!

"My father and his family were forcefully displaced from Palestine to Jordan in 1948 when the state of Israel was established. My mother and maternal family fled from Palestine to Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967, this has inspired me to pursue a humanitarian career in service of refugees in particular," she says.

Hayfa and Mohamed were both among the finalists of the UNV50 Tunisia Volunteer Award for their "innovation to inspire new forms of volunteering". Applications received for this category exhibited the different forms of creativity that volunteers used as pathways to drive inclusion and growth. But these two names stood out. Not only due to the creativity and innovative problem-solving their work demonstrated, but also their remarkable ability to engage other volunteers.

Every day, volunteers dedicate time and effort to ensure the inclusion of those often left behind, to drive climate action and advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For its 50th anniversary, UNV celebrated volunteers across the world through national volunteer awards. The award ceremonies were the results of our joint efforts with Member States governments, Resident Coordinator offices, many times volunteer-involving organizations and UN partners. 

In line with the theme of IVD 2021, Volunteer Now for Our Common Future, partners across the Pacific came together to honour volunteers striving to address development challenges in their communities. 

In 1996, I was appointed by the UNDP Administrator as the new Director for the Arab States, Latin America and the Caribbean (ARLAC) section at UNV. At that time, UNV was celebrating 25 years since its founding. It was also in the process of moving its headquarters from Geneva to Bonn – resulting in more than two-thirds of its staff reassigned to new functions.

We’re talking of literally thousands of people, as I reflect upon 31 years. I served for two years in the early 1980s as a US Peace Corps co-sponsored volunteer in rural Liberia working for a UNDP Self-Help Village Development Project. Then in 1986, four years as the UNV Programme Officer at the Colombo office of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), where I oversaw the UNV Domestic Development Service volunteer programme in Sri Lanka.