My Remarkable Internship Experience at United Nations

Samantha Wing Man Kong, BEng in Chemical and Environmental Engineering (Class of 2014), is one of the 10 representatives from all over the world to work at the United Nations Headquarters in summer 2014. She reflected on how the valuable experience inspired her to work as a Graduate Environmental Engineer at an international consultancy now.

The three-month internship at the United Nations was the most remarkable experience that I have had in my life. Being chosen as one of the ten representatives from all over the world, I spent most of my time at the UN Headquarters in New York City and worked as a NGO representative for World Information Transfer, an organization focuses on promoting environmental health and literacy. I was mainly responsible for attending and summarizing daily briefings held in the UN, covering a wide range of areas from sustainable development, technology, energy, to peace and security. I also participated in various high-level meetings, as well as seminars and briefings held by various UN bodies and agencies including the General Assembly and Security Council. In addition to the duties at the UN, we were given chances to interact with diplomats on developmental issues. This offered me extensive first-hand interaction with decision-makers on developmental issues and practitioners of diplomacy.

One of the most unforgettable meetings was the Opening Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals; it was the agreement by Member States to launch a process to develop a set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) during Rio+20. I attended the last two monthly sessions of the meeting in June and July, I felt glad to be able to get involved and understand the needs of the developing countries, which I did not have much knowledge on. I began to realize the difficulties that both developing countries and developed countries are facing, and yet the Member States clearly voiced out their opinions wholeheartedly.

I slowly built a clear understanding on various world issues and their relationship to my own interest during the course of the internship. The various meetings on environment and sustainability were valuable resources for me to enrich my knowledge in these areas, which in turn inspired me to work as a Graduate Environmental Engineer now at an international consultancy. I am hoping to get my engineering chartership in the coming years, which would enable me to have a stronger knowledge in the environmental field before joining the UN again in the future.

Last but not least, I would like to express my sincere heartfelt gratitude to HKUST Sustainability for supporting my internship at the UN this summer.