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Volunteer for SAFOD’s #IYV Project

The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD), which is a leading disability-focused network engaged in coordinating activities of Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) in the Southern Africa region working in all the 16 countries of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), is currently implementing the #Inclusive Young Voices (#IYV) project.

This is a regional project currently being piloted for the initial four months (December 2021 -March 2022) in Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia. The project aims to provide a platform for youths and children with disabilities in using social media and other online tools in advocating for the effective mainstreaming of disability within national and regional youth/children development frameworks in the SADC region.

It also seeks to digitize disability rights advocacy to catch up with the digital era of advocacy and communication.

Through the project, SAFOD is setting up a cluster of children and youth advocates with disabilities in the aforementioned five pilot countries who can identify critical issues affecting them and create strong compelling messages that will ‘call to action’ the decision-makers and influencers at the national and regional levels. It is expected that some of these Calls to Action will be presented by the children/youths themselves at the forthcoming Global Disability Summit in mid-February 2022. Implementing such an online campaign will contribute to SAFOD’s existing Program on Disability Mainstreaming.

Currently sponsored by UNICEF, the plan is to scale up the project to all the 16 member countries of SADC. You can, therefore, imagine how big the task of reaching young people in all these countries is! This is why we want your help if you care about our cause. One way you can play your part is to volunteer for the cause to help us reach as many young people with disabilities as possible who are motivated to leverage the power of technology – mainly social media – to run online campaigns on issues that affect them.

How you can volunteer for #IYV

There are various ways you can volunteer for the #Incusive Young Voices. Here are just some examples:

  1. Participate in our assessment survey if you are a child or youth with disability aged between 15 and 24 in Southern Africa.
  2. Post about the #IYV project on your social media network platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.) or simply tag #IYV if your posts are relevant to the work we do.
  3. Write about #IYV Issues on our blog even f you don’t necessarily want to join our writers’ competition

Note that the list above contains simple tasks that anyone who cares about our cause can do to help increase our impact while helping to create a better tomorrow. You do not need to formally register with SAFOD in order to carry out those volunteer tasks.

However, from time to time, SAFOD also advertises for specific volunteer openings in which those who want to be formally recruited can apply. With this approach, the application process is not done directly on our websites. Instead, SAFOD is registered on the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) initiative called the UN’s Unified Volunteering Platform where we do not only post all volunteer opportunities but also ensure that all applications are processed on the platform itself.

How the UNV volunteer program works

Previously, the platform was designed strictly for online volunteer opportunities only. However, the good news is that now the new platform is accepting both virtual and physical volunteers. SAFOD posts volunteer positions on the UN platform before they are posted elsewhere. The platform’s admins carefully review/vet each volunteer announcement that has been posted before they publish it (or decline).

We will soon start posting volunteer openings (both virtual and/or physical) on the UN’s Unified Volunteering Platform. Then as soon as each volunteer announcement has been reviewed and approved, we will immediately post the summary of each published announcement on this #IYV volunteer page as well as the volunteer page of our SAFOD’s official website (currently undergoing revamp).

This means you do not necessarily need to search for #IYV volunteer opportunities right on the UN’s Unified Volunteering Platform as none of #IYV volunteer opportunities will be published on the platform without publishing the summary of the same here (if it has been approved). However, each volunteer summary published here will contain a link that will take potential applicants to the specific post on the platform where all applications will be processed.

We will also post the volunteer summaries on our social media networks, as well as circulate them in our newsletter. So, if you want to see quick updates on the new volunteer openings to be posted here, on the SAFOD’s official website, or on the UNV platform, please be sure to follow our social media networks by clicking the icons at the top-right of the menu section above, or subscribe your email in our subscription field within the footer section below.