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.”