Personal stories

Dur­ing my stud­ies, I have always cho­sen inter­na­tion­al options by par­tic­i­pat­ing in intern­ships or uni­ver­si­ty exchanges abroad. This has giv­en me the desire to incor­po­rate this dimen­sion into my future career path. Hav­ing stud­ied admin­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment, I thought it would be dif­fi­cult for me to join an inter­na­tion­al (UN) or region­al (EU) organ­i­sa­tion, because for many posi­tions polit­i­cal sci­ence stud­ies are a require­ment. How­ev­er, the JPO pro­gramme offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join a UN agency in diverse posi­tions, such as com­mu­ni­ca­tion, finance, human resources or law. That is how I was able to apply to and join UNICEF in 2018.

I am now work­ing with UNICEF in Jerusalem, Pales­tine, in charge of youth pro­grammes. My typ­i­cal day con­sists of help­ing to set up projects. I need to plan, coor­di­nate and mon­i­tor these projects, work­ing togeth­er with UNICEF col­leagues, oth­er UN agen­cies or exter­nal part­ners. In gen­er­al, this involves meet­ings, tele­phone calls, email exchanges and, most of all, draft­ing doc­u­ments (pre­sen­ta­tions, reports, etc.). Dif­fer­ing degrees of pri­or­i­ty need to be giv­en to day-to-day requests, so you need to stay flexible.

What I find par­tic­u­lar­ly valu­able is the meet­ings between JPOs and the con­tact we main­tain between us. I have devel­oped friend­ships and pro­fes­sion­al rela­tions in some cas­es with JPOs I met dur­ing my UNICEF ori­en­ta­tion in New York in the first year as well as dur­ing an ori­en­ta­tion at the Unit­ed Nations Col­lege in Turin. In addi­tion to the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence and my increased knowl­edge of the UN envi­ron­ment, these expe­ri­ences have been very impor­tant to me as a per­son, because they give us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share our expe­ri­ence, which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case with oth­er col­leagues in the offices where we work. It is also an asset for the future, for exam­ple in my case I have already had the chance to col­lab­o­rate with a JPO I met in Turin and this has enabled me to feel more confident.

After study­ing pop­u­la­tion and devel­op­ment sci­ences and com­plet­ing an intern­ship with a Peru­vian NGO, I soon had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage in the devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion sec­tor, first­ly on behalf of var­i­ous Lux­em­bourg NGOs. Lat­er, I was lucky enough to be select­ed in 2015 as Junior Tech­ni­cal Assis­tant (JTA) for a health project in Nicaragua, and then as Junior Pro­fes­sion­al Offi­cer (JPO) for UNICEF in Laos, where I coor­di­nat­ed a joint Unit­ed Nations pro­gramme for mater­nal and child health, financed by Lux­em­bourg. Look­ing for a new chal­lenge at the end of this expe­ri­ence, I applied for the posi­tion of ACO in Man­agua, and after being select­ed, I embarked on this new adventure 
in Feb­ru­ary 2018.

My work is very diverse, and nev­er bor­ing. Rep­re­sent­ing Luxembourg’s inter­ests in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca involves many dif­fer­ent respon­si­bil­i­ties. In addi­tion to man­ag­ing the human resources and finances of the Embassy, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic report­ing, and con­sular affairs, I spend most of my time mon­i­tor­ing devel­op­ment projects in Nicaragua, El Sal­vador and at the region­al lev­el, as well as iden­ti­fy­ing new projects. This obvi­ous­ly involves a lot of office work, but there are also field vis­its to observe at first hand Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s impact on the ground.

There is more than one high­light, but I believe that the most impor­tant ben­e­fit is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to active­ly sup­port the reori­en­ta­tion of Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion toward a more region­al approach in a part of the world that is under­go­ing rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. Part­ly due to the socio-polit­i­cal cri­sis in Nicaragua, Lux­em­bourg is mov­ing increas­ing­ly towards region­al coop­er­a­tion in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, sup­port­ing projects that respond to com­mon region­al chal­lenges such as migra­tion, women’s eco­nom­ic auton­o­my or the rights of indige­nous peoples.

Since I had stud­ied inter­na­tion­al and Euro­pean rela­tions, and had spe­cialised in devel­op­ment, I already had con­sid­er­able inter­est and some the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge in this field. After my stud­ies, I decid­ed to trav­el to South Amer­i­ca, and I loved this oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk and inter­act with peo­ple from oth­er cul­tures. When I saw the JTA pro­gramme, which offers an ini­tial expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion and encour­ages pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, my inter­est was sparked.

My days are very var­ied. As JTA at the sup­port pro­gramme for legal teach­ing and train­ing and at the region­al office in Vien­tiane, I work main­ly on mon­i­tor­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Often, my job is to check that all tech­ni­cal aspects — for exam­ple, the terms of ref­er­ence for a train­ing course — are in order. With the project, meet­ings are often also held with the coun­ter­par­ty or oth­er donors.

The high­light as a JTA: just hav­ing con­tributed to spe­cif­ic project results is a very reward­ing expe­ri­ence. And, of course, the coun­try itself! 
Laos, its peo­ple and its nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment are tru­ly exceptional.