NGO Internships at UNEP

Are you interested in environmental issues or passionate in fighting for environmental causes? If your answer is yes, then an internship with UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) is the right NGO internship for you.

Application

Previous UN internships required graduate students, but the guild lines were recently relaxed to include seniors or final year undergraduate students. All UN internships applications are through the UN careers website.

Send in your resume in December and expect to get an interview notice by January. If you are successfully offered a position, the results would be let known to you at the end of February and then all the administrative procedures will follow.

Logistics

First of all, this internship is unpaid. Although UN will help you to deal with some paper documents, students are expected to get their own visas, air tickets and settle their accommodations. As students bear all the cost, it is an important decision to consider whether it you are able to invest in a UN internship.

Cultures and Role

You can expect a typical department to consist of few consultants and administration officer from Europe (Spain, Germany, and Netherlands), the United States and Japan. After all, UN is an overarching organization, so UNEP is still relatively macroscopic, being involved in a number of policy-oriented things. Tasks during the internship may include compiling a technical manual on recycling, drafting a report for a university, put forward some needs to be modified, submit a case study for senior management to review and facilitate a conference attended by a panel of environmental experts.

There is a regular meeting every week, where the department summarizes the work of the previous week, and delegates the task for the current week. Interns got to participate in the meetings and are encouraged to voice out opinions and suggestions. 

It is not unusual that colleagues would invite interns home for a meal or recreation. As it is a cosmopolitan office, you get a first-hand experience of the different culture

Takeaways

UN is indeed able to provide a very international work atmosphere, where we are from different cultures, different backgrounds, so the first thing to learn is respect. One get to experience the vegetarian dietary habits of India and Pakistan colleagues, understand the customs of Japanese colleagues to say "itadakimasu" before meals. The fusion of different culture would be a refreshing experience for interns

Interns would have the chance to engage in dialogues with the administration officer and get inspired by these faithful practitioners of the environmental protection industry.