The summer of 2011 was memorable for the most intensive job search I have ever undertaken. I needed to find an internship placement for a master’s in development studies from Uppsala University in Sweden.
Like most prospective interns who don’t have a trust fund, I researched paid internships. Out of 51 applications, I secured an unpaid internship with Unicef in New York and a paid internship with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Lithuania. I chose the unpaid internship because I wanted to experience life in the Big Apple and see how international affairs across the world operate from New York.
My parents and friends were concerned about how I could live in the city on a full-time unpaid internship. They asked how I was going to be a productive intern if I had to skip lunch because I couldn’t afford to eat? How could I afford the rent?
It was a difficult time financially. I had to dip into my meagre savings from my previous consultancies. Thankfully I had a place to stay with a friend but I imagine that I was a burden. And despite the financial difficulty, the internship was worth it, partly in terms of the lessons learned.
One valuable observation I made as an intern interacting with my superiors at Unicef and acquaintances from other UN agencies was that most did not start their careers as interns. In fact, some entered the field of international development not from the global arena but from local or national institutions ranging from grassroots NGOs to a government ministry. The lesson I learned was: with focus and determination, a paid internship at the local level or in a developing country can also expose you to what is popularly known as “field-based expertise” which makes you desirable for future international assignments. You do not necessarily need to endure hardship in an unpaid internship to have a reputable international development career.
I was fortunate enough to be offered a paid job at Unicef after my internship. But I believe my grassroots experience in my home country, Ghana, made me stand out from other candidates, not my placement at the UN. Practical experiences provide context and meaning to development issues. This became useful in my assignments at various UN agencies in New York where one could be overwhelmed by the detail of negotiations or universalist notions of development.
I’ve often wondered, what if I did not have a social network of friends to count on for support in New York? Perhaps that would have hindered my ambition of a UN career. We recently heard the news of 22-year-old New Zealander David Hyde who lived in a tent because he couldn’t afford the rent in Geneva during an unpaid internship with the UN.
When internships are open only for those who can cover their own cost, only people from wealthy countries take them. The first challenge for a prospective intern is to secure travel funds, which in most cases is impossible for a graduate student, especially from Africa. I believe this creates a double disadvantage for developing country nationals who can’t even intern with the UN in their own countries because developed-country nationals can easily afford to live there. This situation reinforces under-representation and exclusion of developing country nationals.
UN regional offices in developing countries should give priority to local people so they don’t end up having to secure funds for traveling abroad. It was even difficult for me to intern in my home country because most interns at the UN in Ghana were often nationals from developed countries.
In my opinion, there are four main ideas to be considered by prospective UN interns and the UN internship programmes respectively.
Firstly, seek honest opinions from former UN interns on their work experiences and the worth of an unpaid internship.
Second, if a prospective intern’s goal is to gain a UN-oriented development/humanitarian experience, then a UN or a specialist agency’s internship can absolutely positive. However, if the aim is to gain broader development/humanitarian experience, then it could be worth interning in several other options than an unpaid UN internship.
Third, to help prospective interns make an informed decision, it is important for the UN and its agencies to organise open days, both physical and virtual events, to clarify expectations about internships.
Fourth, perhaps one soft approach to mitigating the cost of internship on interns could be to offer some financial and/or other benefits such as a stipend, medical insurance or a free lunch.
It is commendable that at least some UN agencies such as the International Labour Organization does offer paid internships – at least this shows that addressing this situation is not an impossible endeavour.
Michael Boampong is a PhD candidate and tutor at Birkbeck, University of London. He has worked for many UN agencies as consultant focusing on migration and youth development. Follow @mickay360 on Twitter.
Are you a student or recent graduate who undertook a global development or global health-related internship or work experience placement in 2014 or 2015? What was your experience? Send your stories to globaldevpros@theguardian.com with ‘internship’ in the subject line.
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