UN Volunteers, a UN agency and Volunteer Ghana, on Saturday marked this year's International Volunteer Day with a clean-up exercise at Chorkor Beach in Accra. The exercise, which was in collaboration with Accra Metropolitan Assembly, supported by some volunteers from Zoomlion was to ensure the call for good sanitation practices in the community. Some tertiary institutions such as Ghana Institute of Journalism, Zenith College, Maranatha University, Regent University, University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Nurses' and Midwifery Training College - Korle Bu and Africa University of College of Communication also joined in the exercise. The event saw the participation of the Celebrity Ambassadors, Sakordie, D’ Black and Kweku T were there to grace the occasion. During the clean up the volunteers from JICA took the opportunity to demonstrate to the people how to recycle plastic into other products. There were fun games after the clean up including beach soccer, tag of peace and ludo , scrabble . The beach soccer between the volunteer team and the people of the Chorkor community ended up 3-2 against the UN Volunteers. The Volunteer Ghana Group together with some university volunteers visited some households to educate them on the need to build household toilets rather than resorting to the beach to ease themselves. Shigeki Komatsubara, Deputy Country Director of UNDP read a statement by the United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon. He said ‘Volunteerism is a source of strength, resilience, solidarity and social cohesion. He said volunteerism can bring positive social change by fostering respect for diversity and equality among society's most vital assets. He reiterated that the recent "seal the deal" and "volunteering for our planet", campaigns were just the latest examples of how volunteers were helping to shape the word and added that the decisions and actions of individuals may seem insignificant in the face of global challenges. Ms. Hiroko Kodaka, United Nations Volunteer Programmes Officer, commended the celebrity ambassadors for joining in the campaign. She said volunteering was an essential element of civil society to make a significant contribution. It was also a way of promoting social cohesiveness towards making a big difference to the lives of thousands of people. Ms. Kodaka noted that United Nations Volunteer (UNV) was the UN organization that contributed to peace and development through volunteerism worldwide by advocacy, integration and mobilization. She emphasized the need for Ghanaians to volunteer for the development of their communities and nation. The Communications Officer of UNDP, Emmanuel Oduro-Boakye lauded the celebrity ambassadors, for the successes they have together chalked in their career. We hope they would continue to notch up more success in the future. “We at UNDP always admire them for the tremendous energy and creativity that they exude in their music performances. We are extremely proud to be associated with him”.