New
York City Living:
New York City is no Pittsburgh. There are no Pittsburgh Penguins here, it is
hard to even find a place to watch.
Shadyside and the Southside are a long ways away and there is no
Hemingway’s to stop by after class. It
takes about an hour to meet friends from my place in Brooklyn instead of the
5-10 minutes it would take in Pittsburgh.
What is $5 in Pittsburgh is $15 in New York. Regardless, I guess NYC has its perks
too. Countless of things to do on any
given night, you just have to work hard to find the free stuff and deals. Exploring the city is great and being only
about 30 minutes away from the beach is quite an upgrade over Pittsburgh. More on adventures soon but I’ll start off
with an overview of what I am doing this summer.
To the surprise of even myself, I am
fortunate to be completing my internship this summer with the United
Nations. I’m still not sure exactly how
to describe my position so I will give the organizational run-down of where I
am, so take a deep breathe. I work in
the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, within the Division of
Sustainable Development, in the Policy Analysis Branch as an Environmental
Affairs and Sustainable Development intern.
It speaks to the makeup of the organization as a whole and I am quite
interested to learn more about the inner-workings of the UN as I continue this
summer. The UN definitely receives its
fair share of criticism but everyone I have met so far is pragmatically idealistic
and a great person.
So far my experience has been excellent and
I am only convinced it will get better.
My focus throughout will be providing support on the General Assembly
Open Working Groups on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in any way
possible. These SDGs are going to be the
model of post-2015 framework for development that follows the Millennium
Development Goals, which have been the basis of international development since
2000. Starting off, things were a little
slow as I read through lots of background documents and reports on the issues
and topics my department heads. That was
very insightful and necessary in order to contribute on a higher level as the
internship progresses. This week I am
responsible for preparing a number of documents for the third Open Working Group
session and providing summaries that will be part of the larger report on the
SDGs in the coming year. There will be a
total of eight Open Working Group sessions.
My apologies if none of this really makes
too much sense. I will get into further
and more concise details later on, but this has been a busy whirlwind for
myself as well.
For more info on what I am working on, go
to:
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