Building capacity
for delivery of
basic services Through volunteerism, individuals and communities are empowered to become agents of their own change. By participating in initiatives that create resilience and resourcefulness, communities move away from dependency relationships. This is where true transformation lies. Through the deployment of volunteers, UNV strengthens institutions to help overcome the many barriers that stand in the way of progress. Creating opportunities for wider participation in development processes, including for those who may be marginalized and excluded, positively influences the outcomes of service delivery.
U
NV helps build the capacity of government institutions and local counterparts to deliver essential services. UNV work in the health sector in parts of Africa where critical gaps remain in health service delivery is but one example. In collaboration with UNDP and national governments, UNV has been strengthening health care services and building national capacity by deploying UN Volunteer medical doctors in Lesotho and Malawi. In South Sudan and Sudan, UNV partners with UNFPA to deploy UNV midwives and midwife trainers to enhance the skills of fellow health care workers. In Sudan, almost 400 UN Volunteers are on the ground reinforcing the African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID). Volunteers support the mission in a wide variety of areas, including protection of civilians, with a focus on children, human rights and civil affairs. In addition to monitoring and reporting human rights abuses, the UN Volunteers, in partnership with a range of stakeholders, including government institutions and other United Nations entities, are devising an early warning and rapid response system to prevent human rights violations. Since the civil war broke out in Darfur in 2003, education and employment opportunities have been severely limited, presenting a destabilizing risk to peacebuilding efforts. Around 20 per cent of Sudanese nationals in Darfur are between the ages of 15 and 24. UNDP’s Youth Volunteers Rebuilding Darfur programme, in partnership with UNV, addresses the enormous dearth of business and financial skills among women and youth in Darfur.
The initiative promotes entrepreneurship and market participation for women and youth, while training new university graduates to work as trainers and business brokers in rural communities. In cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Finance and Sudanese universities, 205 young volunteers from Darfur, of whom 91 are women, were trained in El Fasher, El Geneina and Nyala. The three-week course covered business and environmental modules, as well as general subjects, such as volunteerism, human rights, conflict resolution and gender studies. A post-training survey found that more than 80 per cent of the volunteers felt confident about sharing their new knowledge and providing similar training in their communities. In a domino effect, the volunteers went on to train a further 3,577 community members, more than half of whom were female, across five states of Darfur. In addition, more than 120 UN Volunteers are working with other United Nations entities in Sudan, such as International Organization for Migration (IOM), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and WFP. The bulk of these latter volunteers are bolstering UNHCR’s work with internally displaced persons in Darfur. A team of 63 international UN Volunteers were deployed in 2013 under the Rapid Capacity Placement Building capacity for delivery of basic services 25