Liaison Newsletter > LIAISON Vol. 1, No. 5, September 1997 - Articles

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Wish you were here, and we were there !!!
by Charissa McIntosh

What do Brasilia, Geneva, London, New York, Ottawa, Québec City, Silver Spring, Tokyo, Turino, and Washington D.C. all have in common? Presently, they are playing host to 20 young Canadians who are participating in UNA-Canada’s International Youth Internship Programme, a project that was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Selected from a group of over 200 applicants, these twenty energetic university and college graduates have been chosen to participate in a programme that provides young Canadians with an opportunity to work abroad for a period of six to eight months for UN and UN-related agencies. The variety of host organizations involved in the programme, means that many of the interns will be exposed to new and exciting experiences that will help them develop many of the skills and tools they require for launching their own careers.

While not all the interns are spending their entire internship in another country, each person participating in the programme is required to spend at least one month abroad. Of the twenty individuals selected, twelve will spend their whole internship overseas in Brazil, Switzerland, the United States of America, Great Britain, Italy and Japan. The others have been placed with host agencies in Canada (Ottawa and Québec City), but will be visiting Western Europe, Africa and the United States.

Many of our interns, we are sure, will be eager to share their international experiences with us on a regular basis, and we will be making a determined effort to relay these anecdotes to you via our web site and subsequent issues of LIAISON.

The only thing that remains to be said, I guess, is a hearty "Congratulations!" to the 20 interns selected for this year’s internship programme. We wish we could join you in your travels around the globe!

Charissa McIntosh is the Project Officer for UNA-Canada’s Youth Internship Programme.