MJ Graduate Internship at the United Nations

MJ graduate, Yolanda Ma, has been interning at the United Nations Development Programme in Beijing this summer.

The UNDP is the United Nations global development fund that helps countries to develop and build their own capacity for development.

Yolanda Ma in front of the UN gate

Ma had already shown an interest in the aid/charitable sector in the past and has previously interned in at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Hong Kong (in communications) and the Hong Kong Clean Air Network (in social marketing).

Ma has been delivering digital media workshops and weekly environmental newsletters to the UNDP’s Environment and Energy team.

She says that she wanted to work at the United Nations because it has a good brand and large-scale projects.

“I am interested in environmental development and wanted to gain some solid knowledge and skills,” says Ma. “I also wanted to have work experience in Beijing and to deepen my understanding of how governmental organisations work.”

The experience has opened up her eyes to the bureaucracy that you find in big organisations but she says that “even bureaucratic organisations need new communications tools such as social media.”

Her main gain has been “project management skills and environmental knowledge in general.”

Ma says that the JMSC taughts her professional ways of utilising social media as well as other new communication tools and that this has helped her internship.

She hopes that she will be able to find a job that mixes together all of the elements of the work she has enjoyed: communications, the environment and policy making.

You can see her presentation slides online at http://www.slideshare.net/majinxin and her newsletters at http://greennews.blogbus.com.