Our stories

The Fair Internship Initiative is a group advocating for higher quality and fairly remunerated internships within the United Nations. Here we collect experiences of UN unpaid interns and tell their stories. 

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Meet Oana Teodorescu

Oana is a Romanian Law student at the Transilvania University Braşov

As a law student, it’s quite difficult to find an internship best suited for my qualifications. Nobody is really willing to help law students improve their skills and gain knowledge in their field of study. There are very few internships for us and 99% of them aren’t paid, which only makes things worse for us.

It’s quite difficult to find such an internship if you don’t live in Bucharest, where all the big law firms are. And if you do find an internship in Bucharest, you have to be able to find accommodation on your own, because nobody is going to pay for your trouble.

In Romania, if you don’t have money or relatives with connections, you are truly in a very difficult situation. It’s really unfair and frustrating, but this is the reality. Everybody who studies law knows that what you study in school is not enough for you to become a great lawyer, prosecutor, judge and so on. You have to be able to use your knowledge in practical cases, you need to be challenged and improve your logical skills.

I don’t understand why people with experience always criticize young graduates and say that they are poorly prepared. It’s their responsibility to help us learn and become experts, but they choose to ignore our requests for internships.

The only paid internship I know about is the one organized by the Romanian Government in Bucharest. Even so, what the Government pays the interns is merely enough for them to buy food for a month, which is fine, as long as they live in Bucharest. I don’t live in Bucharest, so if I want to apply for that internship, I have to arrange for accommodation and live in Bucharest for two months. Then I have to pay for transportation, to come home every weekend.

In fact, I’m glad this internship exists, maybe some big law firms will follow the Government’s example and organize better paid internships.

However, this sad situation doesn’t apply to students at technical universities. For example, those who study computer science have a wide variety of highly paid internships to choose from, because their field is more practical and big companies are very open-minded to beginners.

I wish it could be the same for us, the law students. I know, law is not such a modern science, it’s not like we can invent new technology or design robots. But still, our field of study is a fundamental aspect of the entire society. No matter what business you have or what you do for fun, you need to obey the law. We, as students, have to learn the law and be able to practice it for others who need it.

So why are we so left behind when it comes to internships? That’s just how things are and for the time being, we can’t really do anything about it. We just have to wait and hope that law firms and national institutions will pay more attention to us. In the meantime, we can only apply to a few internships, do our best to learn as much as we can and have our parents support us until we graduate.

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com 

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Meet Elma Jenkins

Elma is one of many who couldn’t afford an internship in Geneva, New York or Ankara. Here she shares with us the letter which she sent to the UN following her frustration of not being able to apply for an unpaid internship. Currently, Elma is an intern at an NGO called SPARK, based in Amsterdam.

Following my MSc in Development Studies I was persuaded to look for internships. It was not something I initially wanted to do but many who worked in the sector told me it was very useful. As many internships require you to still be signed up as a student, I found a way of extending my MSc for an extra 6 months to include work experience. From my previous work I had saved up 6,000 pounds which paid for my study. The extra 6 months would have to be paid out of a continued student loan as my savings were up. I looked into the bigger organisations but found that moving and living in a more expensive city was simply not possible for me. I consider myself lucky to have found somewhere very cheap and quiet outside of Amsterdam but still within easy traveling distance to complete this internship now. I have found a nice internship in the Netherlands at a small NGO called SPARK which pays me a stipend of  €300 which covers my rent, and I have extended my student loan to see me through the coming 6 months.

This is my letter to the UN. Sadly I never got a reply back. 

“To whom it may concern, 

I am a mature MSc graduate who has spent five years working and volunteering in the UK and abroad in between studies. I was going to apply for your internship in Turkey as it sounded like a great opportunity to apply my PR and writing skills and a chance to see how a UN agency works. After careful review of your application form I have decided against it and to send you this e-mail instead. 

I find it rather strange that as an organisation committed to development you are not prepared to pay at least a living in-country wage to interns. As a recent graduate I am well aware that the job market is tenuous at best right now, and strong pressure on governments and business is needed to make sure everyone is given at least a bare minimum of equal opportunity in life and decency of living. I believe it was the World Bank who recently raised the poverty line from $1.25 to almost $3 and also declared that dignity in development should be a key aim.  

How you can then “offer” an internship ─ expecting 6 months of unpaid work from experienced graduates and demand that they purchase their own health and life insurance, I am not sure, but the irony does not escape me. The UN is a colossal organisation with close to a five billion yearly turnover, it is supported by major European countries who all have minimum wage standards who want to promote themselves as the load starts of development. This is simply not acceptable and does nothing to help equalize growing inequality in places like the UK where I am from. I can assure you not many young people will be able to fund this unless they are fortunate enough to be funded by a family member or by getting into debt. The former of which only perpetuates unequal opportunities while the latter can set a young person back considerably and put them at risk of vulnerable housing. I will be looking for paid opportunities only through the UN and I hope to see more in the future.”   

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com

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#ZeroDiscrimination also means equal opportunities at the UN. I support Fair Internship Initiative #UNpaidIsUNfair http://thndr.me/l0FQ7p

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Meet Robert Birnbaum

Robert is an intern at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in New York

I finished my studies in economics in fall of 2015 and was very surprised when I was accepted for an internship with the United Nations in New York, because actually I totally forgot about my application.But after accepting it, it felt to me like the right decision and an opportunity to learn in such a multicultural environment would be worth the trip overseas.

Completing such an internship in a city such as New York, unpaid and so far away from home, was no easy task for anyone. Was I willing to go and gain valuable experience, and then come back less financially secure? I weighed the pros and cons and thus I began to calculate the numbers and worked at carrying out this opportunity. After doing the math however, it turned out I would have to be homeless in NYC in order to afford it, a challenge that I believed, would be worth it.

As I began to formulate a plan, the thought of being homeless, in the dead of winter really took me aback a couple times, but nonetheless I carried on planning. As time went on my concerns gradually dissipated and my confidence grew, I began to realize that in one way or another my end goal would be achieved. Armed only with 3 nights of accommodation, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, backpack and clothes I departed for John F. Kennedy Airport on the 26th of January (thanks to the blizzard, 3 days later than I had planned).

Since January 27th, I have been couch surfing at various people’s flats. Every time, I’ve gotten along very well with my hosts and I would cook some delicious dinner in the evening for all of us. Sometimes it’s quite exhausting but overall I’m having a fun time, even though I wouldn’t recommend it to other interns. The toughest part is scheduling housing almost on a daily basis. Every time I move to a new place I have to unpack and then have to pack up again the next morning, as I head to work at 1 United Nations Plaza. At the security I would have to receive extra treatment from the guards as my backpack doesn’t fit in the baggage scanner. UN Security would have to come and manually check my belongings, usually skeptical, but always friendly. After security, is the walk to my office where I always catch a few extra gazes as a tall man in a suit, with a big backpack is very unusual in the Secretariat building.

To date, it has been one month since I started and I have another one to go. I have already stayed with a very diverse range of people all over New York. Many thanks go out to my lovely fellow interns who are very eager to support me in my endeavour by offering me housing. With one more exciting month to go, I eagerly await what other experiences I would get to be a part of. Thank you to the United Nations for making these opportunities possible ;)

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Sign up to our campaign on Thunderclap or check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com 

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Meet Kara Charbarneau

Kara has completed a masters of international relations/political science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva

Despite what some would think, and despite the label of coming from a middle-class American family, my life has never been what I would consider easy. Don’t get me wrong, I obviously have grown up with many advantages just growing up in the United States as is, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a walk in the park either.

At an early age I learned the value of a dollar. Due to the United States’ fluctuating economy post-9/11, my father – who is my family’s main provider has been in and out of work for the last 15 years.

So, as a point of pride and to lessen my family’s burden, I began to work. Every spring and fall I would referee soccer games with my father; save up the money, and use it throughout the year as my pocket money. When I turned 16, I continued to referee soccer games, but also took another part time job. Eventually I would go on to carry at least two part time jobs while going to school full time until I was 22. When I decided to pursue my master’s degree in Geneva I did not have much in savings and my family had no means to support me in the slightest, so I took out a $50,000 loan from the U.S. government.

Due to Swiss law, as an American student I was not allowed to work for the first six months of my stay in Geneva. Strike 1. As soon as the 6-month bar lifted I began the arduous search for work. Prior to the start of my search I had begun to hear from fellow students, that while there were many “opportunities” to work for the various UN agencies and other respected organizations, the majority were unpaid. I was raised with the strong mentality to pay one’s dues. To this day, I still believe this notion, and doing one unpaid internship was worth the experience. However, the more I searched and the more I talked with fellow students who I was now beginning to realize were some of my biggest competition, was that it did not just stop at one unpaid internship. I have friends who had been doing unpaid internships for years….YEARS. Strike 2.

Despite my anxiety I pressed on, and after countless applications I finally landed an internship. Unpaid and for four months. Reflecting on that time, I learned a lot about human rights advocacy, communication, and the many functions of the United Nations. I did enjoy my time. However, it must be said, those four months were incredibly stressful. See, I was still attending a full load of classes at the time to complete my master’s. On top of that, I had also acquired a waitressing job a few nights a week. While I did learn a lot at my internship, I also feel like I did not live up to my potential and it was not the best of circumstances. Since I could not commit as much time to the internship, I felt like my supervisor did not give me as many tasks as my fellow interns who could spend more time with the organization.

After I completed my four months with that organization I was back to square one looking for another internship or potential job opportunity. This time was even more stressful: I was in the process of writing my dissertation and dreading the countdown I had going on in my head of how much time could I allow myself before it would become no longer possible for me to continue my life in Geneva. Again, while I am all for paying my dues to the system, this time I could not afford to have an unpaid internship. My loan money was drying up fast, and with no other means of financial income or support, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Days went by, weeks, months. Nothing was coming up. The majority of internships was unpaid, and even those who did offer a stipend, it was too miniscule to make a difference. In order to do a full time unpaid internship, I would have had to also take some sort of job working in the evening or the weekends to support myself. There just isn’t enough time in the day for all of that. Eventually, I had to make the hard decision to give up my search and leave Geneva to return back to my family’s home. Strike 3.

It was one of the hardest and saddest decisions I have ever made. I failed. I could not make it. In my hometown I was the big fish in the small pond, but in Geneva I was the opposite. I was the small fish in the large, enormous sea.

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Sign up to our campaign on Thunderclap or check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com

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Meet Jonas Pulendrarasa

Jonas is an intern at the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations Headquarters in New York

It took me almost two months to apply to the internship program at the UN. The application process was not easy, at times even confusing and I was hesitant between whether I should apply or not. The last day before the deadline, I decided to apply. I was very pessimistic, but well, I had nothing to lose…except for one thing: a lot of money that I didn’t have. In fact, I didn’t know how to finance the internship. During the phone interview, they asked me whether I would be fine financially during the six-month internship period in New York. I said “yes” but I didn’t have anything in my pocket, nor were my parents able to afford it. Before leaving to New York, I decided to ask everyone I knew if they could help me find housing but I didn’t find a cheap place to live even until a few days before my departure. I was literally getting ready to live somewhere in New York under a bridge or with a tent somewhere in a park. At the last minute I secured a place with poor immigrant workers in a marginalized neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was an enriching experience to discover the different aspects of the American life and its inequalities. Every morning it took me one hour to go to work. The cost of the monthly travel pass is US$ 116. There was no stipend or reduced fare for unpaid interns. Often I was already late to pay my rent of US$ 350 as I didn’t have money. Often I was wondering the whole day at work about how I could afford to travel to work the next day. I didn’t eat enough for a couple of days. I couldn’t ask my parents for help as I knew the situation was already hard for them. I waited until they were able to afford to send me some money. I used to work without eating and drinking enough water, attending meetings and getting my tasks done. Usually I’d find something in the morning like milk or bread from roommates but that was often my only meal for the whole day. I often had a severe headache and couldn’t work properly. During that time, the Fair Internship Initiative (FII) was organizing weekly meeting. I went to a lunch meeting. We were discussing about interns’ issues, everyone was eating food and discussing but I didn’t have anything. I could not even express myself that I cannot afford to eat. On another day, colleagues and other interns invited me to eat together but I had to decline. One day I decided to organize a protest for interns in front of the UNHQ. I was alone and  I hadn’t eaten. I planned to stay 15 minutes but then I stayed one hour. I thought about all the others who cannot even come to the UN to protest. In my home country, India, it would take a year of full salary for a person to come and do an unpaid internship of 6 months. I remembered that only two decades ago, I was a refugee and I didn’t have any home to stay. One evening, I was still in the office working. It was around 8pm and a colleague who was leaving told me that I should not be working like that. “You are not paid you should go and enjoy the city!”, he said. I didn’t know how to answer. I told him that it is a quite expensive city and made him understand indirectly that I was in a difficult situation. He left saying that he would help me. A few minutes later he came back with a hundred dollars. He told me “Take it, you are my friend.” I didn’t want to take it but due to my situation I took it in the end. A week later, when my situation got better, I gave him a card to thank him and his money back. Another day it was the birthday of my intern colleague and they had planned to go for lunch with other intern friends. They selected a restaurant, I couldn’t refuse because it was a pleasure to work with this intern and she is a very nice person. I had only US$ 20 for the week. I took the cheapest dish, they decided to also give tips. I had 3 dollars for the rest of the week.

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Sign up to our campaign onThunderclap or check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com

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Meet Teuta Turani

Teuta Turani completed a full-time internship in Geneva

Prior to coming to Geneva, I was engaged full-time in a social-political movement in my home country, Albania. The movement was committed to breaking the monopoly of the main political parties and to eventually offer an alternative to the rotten system which caused our country to lag behind its European neighbours for years. Political involvements in Albania are often associated with some sort of financial benefit or at least with the promise of an immediate better upcoming status in the labour market. It therefore came as a surprise to many that I was contributing full-time while still being unpaid. Regardless of the perceptions that surrounded me, the reality was that I had a stake in the process, I and my contribution were seen and the reward that came with that exceeded financial remuneration.

After this experience my understanding of free labour, especially if directed toward greater causes, was somehow inflated and biased. It was with this in mind that I accepted an unpaid internship at a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) in Geneva.

I found myself, once again, surrounded by some of the most dedicated and hardworking people, whose passion was, sometimes, dim from exhaustion but still bright with perseverance. However inspirational the experience, there was no way of slowing down the quick draining of my savings, even though I was one of the interns that had the financial privilege of even considering this experience. An average Albanian citizen earns around 350 euros/month, with little left to put aside. I'll let you work out how many years of saving it would take them in order to invest at least 8.000 euros in a six-month, unpaid, internship in cities like Geneva or New York. Albania is not even one of the poorest countries in the world.

The understanding that my status as an unpaid intern and the roles assigned to me could indeed be questioned was not immediate. The over-idealization of the UN had made my fellow interns and I see it as an aspiration, quite naive to what could be the consequences of free labour.

It was difficult for me to ascertain the convenience of being open and honest about this issue and it was even more difficult to realize how much apathy and disinterest I would encounter from the decision-making bodies. What followed were countless meetings with permanent missions in the UN, open letters, peaceful protests, flash mobs and panel discussions. A chicken-egg situation between member states and the UN, ironically whirled into a circle of outpouring empathy and support. ''Yes, we know you are unpaid and we utterly believe this is unfair and discriminatory...but please notice we can't do anything about it.'' The values that unified us were pooled into a larger system of rules and resolutions, a system acknowledging its flaws but strangely not reacting as fast as it should or at times even deflecting responsibility.

This time, my attempts of attaching the deserved importance to this issue were not seen most of the time and the reaction from the UN was quite limited.

I have therefore decided to retrace my story, the story of an unpaid intern, through the #UNPAIDisUNSEEN social media campaign. For 180 days I will be posting a picture of the unseen intern who, in the name of a magical steroid known as work experience, is expected to compromise his/her right of being equally paid for equal work; the unseen intern who is excluded a-priori due to his inability to afford this position; the unseen intern who is contributing to a distorted labour market in which the minimum wage starts looking like a King's ransom. Through this campaign I aim to tell the UN more about the sense of invisibility that is embracing the generation which will be leading it in a few decades. Our overzealous energy, creativity and hopes unfold as a reflection of the way we are perceived, respected and trusted. A generation that is expected to compromise with its own worthiness and rights today is not a generation that will fight for others' rights and futures tomorrow, not a generation the UN should demand.

'Why don't you pay your interns?' is not so much a question of technical understanding anymore. It is instead a call demanding an honest explanation on how it is possible that the UN, the cradle of fairness and equality, is allowing this issue to persist within its structures.

I believe that my honesty abides to a code of ethics which can only make a contribution to the organization's prosperity. If only the UN could start translating its willingness to support youth into further actions and commitments, then we wouldn't have to jump a fence of compromises but rather enter from a gate which embeds those values the UN stands for.

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Sign up to our campaign onThunderclap or check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com

This article was originally published by the Huff Post UK.

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Meet Evans Campbell

Evans Campbell completed an internship at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva.

IOM offers stipends to most of their interns, except when the internship is part of a university agreement, or when the intern is sponsored by other schemes or organizations.

In choosing to leave Kenya to pursue an internship in Geneva, the most convincing factor was definitely that the internship was paid. I was already going to spend a lot of my own money to get to Switzerland and would never have afforded life there without a form of income.

My internship was with the Media & Communications department in IOM. Life in Geneva was pretty expensive even on an internship salary. I spent 50% of what I earned on rent alone and about 20% on living expenses like food and transport. That doesn't really leave you with much to pursue personal interests. I was surprised that the organisation did not see fit to provide housing, even if shared, for its interns. 

I am no longer in Geneva now. After a rescinding of my consultancy contract offer on the suspicious basis of what my supervisor referred to as "personal incompatibilities" I had no choice but to return home, Nairobi, as earlier planned. Since then, life has been better to me. 

I have heard of and read a lot of sad stories about great people that struggle because of unpaid internships. They are highly capable and motivated to work, but cannot do so because the cost to themselves is financially unbearable. 

It is unfair for organisations that occupy the realm of protecting and championing human rights and freedoms to leave some of their most crucial members of staff uncared for. Interns do a lot of work and deserve pay commensurate to that.

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Sign up to our campaign onThunderclap or check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com

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Meet Henry Ogbuagu

Intern at the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) in New York Internships are cool, right? Well, for many like myself who apply for the UN internship each year, the idea of interning at the United Nations often sounds way cooler the first time. We all have our individual reasons why we go for it, but truth be said, it often boils down to that feeling that interning at the UN is just the coolest thing in the world to do. As young people we always want to be seen, heard, and feel important and what better place to make that dream come through than in the world's most influential hub: the UNITED NATIONS. Not to mention the privilege it offers interns to live in and explore New York City.

Sadly all this imaginary and magical experiences soon becomes almost illusive and suddenly disappears once you step through the doors, and face the reality of working adult life in New York. At least that was where it began for me. Coming from a developing country and having no sponsorship, I had to start answering the difficult questions of where to live, how to get to work, what or where to eat etc. Essentially asking myself the ridiculous question of how to survive in NYC as a working adult without a working adult income. Well, thanks to Airbnb I found a deal for the cheapest possible housing you could ever imagine in New Jersey and booked in as soon as I could for a few weeks. Needless to say the price, I would rather do myself the honor of preserving what is left of my humanity.

As an international student from the global south, I was already in a difficult place having to work to pay for grad school and I was hoping that doing an internship would buy me some time, but I guess I was not smart to ask how? And because I was essentially leaving a paid part time job I had while studying to take up an unpaid full time internship at the UN, it soon became clear that the math just did not add up. But I was still caught in the euphoria of impressing others with my new status of becoming a “UN intern” that I somehow chose deniability.

But as the first few weeks rolled by, I could see the dusts settling and my long nurtured enthusiasm for the UN gradually waning, not because I was losing faith in the cause, or disliked what I was doing, but quite on the contrary I was learning so much, yet I could no longer deny the reality of my difficult living circumstances. Since then it has also been a very bad learning curve as I hobble around Airbnb and managing to keep myself alive while interning. It is my sincere hope that the shifting culture of recruitment in our societies today will cause many like myself to question the system.

We need a more sustainable way to empower young people and stop draining them and its high time institutions, governments, and civil society start listening.  

To promote change towards fairer internships, FII is sharing stories of UN interns in their daily life. Want to support us? Sign up to our campaign on Thunderclap or check fairinternshipinitiative.wordpress.com