UNICEF - An intern's perspective

When I got my placement at UNICEF after interviewing with CWWL, I was thrilled beyond belief - everyone at some point in their lives has dreamed of working at a UN agency. Just before I finally joined the organization, however, I was very apprehensive about my value as an intern. I had heard several stories about people complaining that all they did during their internship was carry mail from one department to another! (I am serious!) 

My first day at UNICEF was pretty uneventful, most people treated me like a 20-something intern (which I should probably take as a compliment, since I was 20 a long time ago ;)) and paid little attention. However, as the days went by, and under the mentorship of the Secretariat, I was able to start contributing to several key issues. One of the things that really worked in my favor was the fact that the Secretariat was planning to be on vacation for 3 weeks soon after I had joined. For this reason, my training period was fast-tracked, as this would enable me to take over some of her responsibilities in her absence!

These included overseeing the activities/meetings for MoRES - Monitoring Results for Equity System - a key initiative that has evolved at UNICEF in the past year. This program encourages all countries to monitor sectors (Health, Education, Sanitation, etc) in a decentralized manner, and report results every quarter/mid-year for continual feedback and assessment. Currently 27 countries have started the implementation of this program for all their sectors, and this initiative is leading to a change in the way UNICEF does work.

These also included some IT related work for the Executive Office, such as complete overhaul of the MoRES intranet website; creation of a new MoRES collaborative portal based on SharePoint, which required the combined input and specific requirements documentation of several programmatic departments; as well as innovative ideas on the implementation of "A Promise Renewed" - UNICEF's renewed promise to end child mortality across the world.

Finally my responsibilities also included working closely with the Deputy Executive Director, Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta and the Executive Manager, Kate Rogers. An interesting incident that took place the first time I met Geeta, was that we realized we were from the same part of India, and spoke the same regional language! For anyone who knows the number of languages that currently exist in India (about 30 or so "official" and a total of approx. 1,652) this is not a very common occurrence. Needless the say, I was thrilled :-)

Another extremely fortunate incident was that I ran into the UNICEF Executive Director, Mr. Anthony Lake, in the basement gym of our building. After chatting and introductions, he asked me which team I was working with and invited me as his guest to a high-level strategic meeting with the Head of UNDP, Ms. Helen Clark (ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand). Not only did I get to participate in the pre-briefing with Mr. Lake, Dr. Gupta and a couple of key advisers, the actual meeting with the UNDP Head (and her key advisers) was extremely successful!

Now that I am in my final two weeks of the internship, I reflect on all the amazing experiences I have had so far, whether it was setting up of the entire MoRES collaborative portal, or attending some of the meetings with the Regional Directors. What I loved most, however, was that while every task was a new learning experience, and I felt that I could contribute in a significant way to a key UNICEF initiative, the passion and zeal of everyone I encountered/worked with was heartwarming. All these efforts are towards the betterment of the lives of millions of children across the world, and while I only played a short part in a whole milieu of programmatic activities, I do believe that it was a summer well spent!