The Volunteer Advisory Services Section (VASS) contributes to position UNV as a Knowledge and Policy hub on volunteerism for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), generating knowledge, consolidating evidence and advocating with Member States and the UN system to integrate volunteerism in their policies and plans, as a cross-cutting means of implementation into the 2030 Agenda, in alignment with UNV 2022-2025 Strategic Framework.
Reporting to the Policy Specialist leading the VASS Evidence Team with matrix supervision to the Chief, Volunteer Advisory Services Section, the Policy Associate provides support to the development, maintenance, and implementation of knowledge management, and contributes to building up a body of knowledge and evidence on volunteerism for sustainable development action. He/she also supports events planning, coordination, and convening for stakeholder engagement.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Effective support to stakeholder convening and events for VASS
- Serve as secretariat for event planning and coordinate, plan and organize VASS knowledge and evidence events and consultations; report on indicators on relevant related issues related to level of attendance and audience composition;
- Manage UNV´s client (stakeholders) database to ensure all partners and key correspondence are updated to allow the organization to share knowledge with all partners and contacts including civil society, academia and Volunteer Involving Organizations. Contribute to expand the identification of new volunteer related organizations through active exchanges with UNV´s organizational units;
- Provide guidance to UNV Regional Offices on the coordination and organization of VASS events including stakeholder participation;
- Develop and maintain a global calendar of relevant events and opportunities for VASS and maintain updated mailing lists for UNV´s different audiences in order to facilitate outreach initiatives.
2. Effective support to the development, maintenance and implementation of knowledge management
- Research, identify and retrieve knowledge products and ensure that they are categorised according to the VASS system;
- Propose innovative approaches for the development of new tools and material to showcase the value of volunteerism through evidence;
- Administer the Knowledge Portal through regular reviews to ensure that all critical sources in the portal such as laws and policies on volunteerism are correctly archived and updated.
- Hold the master list of research and policy publications for UNV to ensure that key documents are readily available to the communications team for the UNV website;
- Liaise with Regional Offices for information gather