María José Benítez, a student of the first promotion of Master's Degree in research in Social Sciences (MICS) at the University of Navarra, is part of the team of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean.

UNV works to promote the volunteer activities as a way of participation to build peace, development sustainable and also to eradicate poverty. "The volunteer activities is a means to become a real-life hero. In the Caribbean, for example, volunteers have given all their energy to support reconstruction after natural disasters," he says.

Although her responsibility as regional specialist in Peace and Citizen Security is recent, she is not new to the United Nations: she has been collaborating for more than seven years in the organization's protection and peace-building programs.

At her position, María José Benítez supports her peers in the implementation of peace and youth programs. She has accompanied in building networks of young participants in peace projects in Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago and Peru.

To this end, they systematize and compile the life stories of the people who are part of the program. He recognizes that it motivates him a lot "that the youth are the ones who are mostly involved and that they do it in such a committed and professional way".

training for the work

María José emphasizes that her work is closely related to programs of study in social sciences, which she studied in depth during her MICS studies: "The research is not something that comes "naturally"; that is, behind the systematizations, evaluations, life histories, there is a process that must guarantee the rigorousness presented in the documents".

"Now I pay attention to the methodology, to how the sample was selected, to the questions that were asked. The MICS has given me the tools to present information in a way manager", he stresses.

This Master's Degree is coordinated by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), the research center in Humanities and social sciences of the University of Navarra. It counts with the direct partnership of Schools of Communication, Law, Education and Psychology, Nursing and Philosophy and Letters).