For as long as she can remember, Leila Moshref has dreamed of
working for the United Nations. Two summers ago, she landed an
internship with an affiliated organization, turning her wish into a
reality.
Moshref, a fourth-year political science student specializing in
international relations, is one of several UCLA students who have
interned for the U.N. Those students said interning with the U.N.
gave them insight into the workings of the organization and allowed
them to form distinct perspectives on its value and effectiveness,
but not all found the experience enjoyable.
Moshref journeyed to Washington, D.C., in summer 2005 to intern
at the Baha’i International Community Office, a
non-governmental organization that works closely with the U.N. to
represent the interests of the Baha’i community.
“It was eye-opening to see how the U.N. works,”
Moshref said. “I know that sometimes when people talk about
the U.N. they say it’s defunct at this point and has no
power, but I say … in terms of development issues, the U.N. is
doing some great work.”
Moshref said her internship was rewarding enough to merit a
return trip, and she chose to intern again for the same office
during summer 2006.
Stacy Edgar, a fourth-year political science student
specializing in international development, said she also is finding
her current internship experience valuable and enjoyable. Working
jointly with the American Bar Association and the U.N., she said
she believes she can make a difference in matters important to
her.
“I get the sense that I am making a difference, although I
don’t know at what level,” Edgar said. “When
you’re writing a memo for the people (who work with) the U.N.
who are running the country and its policies, and you realize that
they might be influenced by your memo, you get that there’s a
chance you might be making a huge difference.”
As part of UCLA’s Center for American Politics and Public
Policy research program, Edgar is currently working out of the Bar
Association office in Washington, D.C., but is a legal research
intern for both the ABA and the United Nations Development
Programme.
Her duties include researching and writing memos for the
Development Programme county offices, which help advise decisions
on matters of development, such as reducing poverty, promoting
education, and implementing health care worldwide, Edgar said.
Ellen Kersten, a geography and political science alumna who
graduated in 2006, had a very different experience while working
with the U.N. She said her internship last spring, also through the
CAPPP program, opened her eyes to the downsides of the
organization.
Though she first anticipated her internship with excitement, she
soon grew disenchanted and disheartened by the ineffectiveness of
the U.N. bureaucracy she observed.
“I went into the internship really excited, since it
combined my interests in Latin America and the U.N. But once I got
there I realized that I didn’t want to work for a
bureaucracy. I started dreading going to the office because I was
stuck in a little hallway without a window doing mindless
tasks,” Kersten said.
Kersten, who worked for the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean in New York, said she did not enjoy her
internship because she took on issues and projects that were not
important to her.
“I worked on updating a report on Latin American goods and
different trade barriers that the U.S. has on goods from Latin
America,” Kersten said. “I read all these reports and
spent a lot of time in the library, but everything started sounding
the same.
“Everything seemed to go slow and nothing ever got done,
even though everyone was working.”
Moshref, on the other hand, said one of the reasons she found
her internship rewarding is that she shares similar goals and
beliefs with the U.N.
As a member of the Baha’i, a religious group that calls
for the unification of mankind, Moshref said she valued the
opportunity to combine her interests in international policy with
her spiritual beliefs.
Taught from a very young age to have a global perspective,
Moshref said she enjoyed being a part of the collaboration between
the BICO and the U.N.
“The BICO and the U.N. are taking the route of unification
and putting aside the politics to create a spiritual solution for
very real material problems,” Moshref said.
“Last summer I was able to help out with the BICO
statement on the progress of the U.N. so far, where we were at,
what had been going on, where the U.N. could go in the future, all
from the Baha’i perspective. I loved it so much last summer,
I would recommend it for anyone.”
Despite her overall dissatisfaction with the program, Kersten
agreed that any exposure to the U.N. can provide students with
valuable insight and help cement their views about the
organization.
“It definitely was an invaluable experience, even if it
just helped me figure out what I don’t want to do,” she
said. “I needed this experience because I stopped being so
naively idealistic and started gaining an understanding of the
complexity of getting decisions made.”