Students learn about languages and UN

Students from an easter vacation camp, visited UNIC to learn about the world of languages at United Nations. They were greeted in Spanish by the Director of the Centre - Juan Miguel Diez who is a Mexican. He related some of his experiences as a young adult on a language exchange programme in France and also how speaking English became a requirement for him when he was ready to start his professional career. The young people who were just about to decide on what language they should choose to learn at secondary school also learned that United Nations operates in six official languages -  French; Spanish; English; Arabic; Russian and Chinese. While there are six official languages the Orgnaisation operates in English and French and field offices like UNICS operate in many other languages, in fact the 63 UNICs around the world tell the story of United Nations in more than one hundred languages.

Discovering a UN careers in languages:

During the visit to the UNC students also met with an ECLAC collegue who enagaged them in conversation about mulitlinguism and how very important it is especially when communicating during times of emergencies - UN's humanitarian work reaches people in almost every corner of the globe.  Understanding and being able to relate ideas culturally appropriate is also ciritcal for coming to consensus at General Assembly debates, resolving conflicts and finding a pathway to peace. They also discovered that  2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages and that there was a  UN's language career portal that highlingts different types of jobs that people who speak more than one language can find for example translators, editors, reporters and more.

During their visit the vacation camp teens also got their hands on and thoroughly enjoyed playing the SDGs board game and a locally created climate action game that was sponsored by the UNDP as part of it's GEF funding for climate change intitiatives.

Images from the visit