The Power of Volunteering

Author: Olivier Adam

Olivier Adam is a retired UNDP staff member and former Executive Coordinator of UN Volunteers.

Many of us who spent our careers in the United Nations system were drawn to it by a sense of purpose—a belief that our work could contribute to something larger than ourselves. We moved across duty stations, adapted to new countries and cultures, and gave decades to the pursuit of development, peace, and human dignity. When that chapter closes, the transition into retirement can leave a gap that is hard to define but impossible to ignore. For me, volunteering has been the thread that has run through my entire life—and it is what continues to give that life meaning.

As a teenager growing up in a small city outside Paris, where the inequalities around me were hard to miss, particularly among nearby migrant communities, where families struggled with things most of us took for granted, I spent two summers volunteering at local camps for children from those backgrounds. It was my first real experience of giving my time to others, and what surprised me was how much it gave back. Working with those kids, I learned that even small gestures—attention, patience, encouragement—could make a genuine difference.

Years later, posted to New York as a Junior Professional in the late 1980s, I found myself in the middle of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Many of you will remember what those years were like—the fear, the stigma, the sense that institutions were too slow to respond. For me, it was deeply personal: friends and people in my community were falling ill. I got involved with ACT UP, volunteered with God’s Love We Deliver packaging meals for people too sick to care for themselves, and worked the hotline at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, taking calls from people who were frightened and searching for someone who would listen and provide advice. It was heartbreaking work—it taught me that volunteering, at its deepest, is about being present with people when they need it most.

In the early 1990s, while posted in Haiti, volunteering remained part of my life outside the office. In underserved neighbourhoods, we organized community cleaning campaigns—efforts that went beyond sanitation and helped restore a sense of collective pride. I began mentoring young Haitians, encouraging them to see themselves as contributors rather than beneficiaries. Anyone who has worked in development knows how transformative that shift can be—when people move from receiving help to offering it.

These experiences shaped my career in ways I could not have anticipated. They led me to manage the partnership between UNDP and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, supporting countries with limited capacity to respond to those diseases. And they eventually brought me to what I consider the greatest privilege of my professional life: serving, in my last post, as Executive Coordinator of United Nations Volunteers. In that role, I saw up close what so many of us have witnessed throughout our careers—that individual acts of commitment, multiplied across countries and cultures, become a force far greater than any single institution.

Our careers gave us purpose, structure, and a sense of contribution. Retirement, for all its freedoms, can quietly take some of that away. The meetings stop, the emails slow down, and the identity we built over decades can start to feel less solid.

Volunteering has been my answer to that. Today, alongside coaching, I mentor younger professionals—sharing not just technical knowledge but the things you can only learn by living: how to navigate setbacks, how to lead with humility, how to keep perspective when the work feels overwhelming. It keeps me engaged, keeps me learning, and gives me a sense of purpose that retirement alone does not provide.

I believe we, as UN retirees, are uniquely positioned to volunteer in meaningful ways. We bring decades of experience working across cultures. We have skills in mediation, management, communication, and analysis that are in short supply in many organizations. And perhaps most importantly, we have time—something that was always scarce during our careers.

Volunteering does not have to be grand or global. It can be mentoring a young professional, supporting a local charity, coaching someone through a career transition, or simply showing up regularly for a cause that matters to you. What counts is the willingness to stay engaged—to keep giving, even when no one is asking you to.

The power of volunteering lies not in any single act of service but in what it does to us over time. It connects us to others. It reminds us that we still have something to offer. And it gives retirement not just comfort, but purpose. For those of us who spent our lives trying to make a difference, that is no small thing.