Esther Nantana (24) is one of the four Namibians selected as African Union (AU) Youth Volunteers – Researchers for 12 months.
They will be working under the African Union Human Resource, Science and Technology (HRST) Department in the Youth Division.
Nantana said: “I will honour this incredible opportunity by working diligently and efficiently. I recognise that all that is granted to me as a young person reflects to my peers and therefore have a responsibility to uphold a standard of exceptional work.”

She said unfortunately due to Covid-19 and the closure of borders, they are doing a virtual onboarding, meaning she will be working remotely from Namibia until things have cleared up and they are transferred to the headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The programme is a continental development platform that recruits and collaborates with youth volunteers, to work in all 54 countries across the African Union to promote volunteerism to deepen the status of young people in Africa as key participants in the delivery of Africa’s human development targets and goals.

“I’ll be assisting with the mapping of all ongoing volunteer programmes in African countries and other research-related duties for one year,” explained Nantana.
The programme brings people together to share skills, knowledge, creativity and learning to build a more integrated continent and by implication strengthen Africa’s relevance in the globalized world.

African Union Youth Volunteers primarily focuses on fields such as education, health and HIV/AIDS, peace and security, just to mention a few Nantana joins this organisation after applying online and carefully been selected after meeting the criteria.
Applicants goes through screening for completeness, through a vital and transparent process.
The next process is the one where applications of nominated volunteer candidates are matched with available vacancies according to the criteria specified by the requesting organization.

After that they are then selected and go through the training process and eventually be trained for a period of two to three weeks by youth volunteer unit to enhance volunteers professional, interpersonal and life skills.
Since 2016, 12 young Namibians went through these processes to be youth volunteers.
-psiririka@nepc.com.na