Thanks I2CRP & VCU News

Adrian Diaz, Braveen Raghunathan, and I have more in common than our internship with the WHO this past summer. The three of us are also part of the International, Inner City, Rural Preceptorship Honors Program community at the Medical College of Virginia / Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

Check out this VCU News story: Student Trio Interns with WHO.

Special thanks to Erin Lucero at the VCU SOM's Office of Development for writing and sharing this story, the Harvard Kennedy School Women and Public Policy Program Women's Leadership Board Summer Fellowship Program for making this experience possible for me, the WHO Emergency and Essential Surgical Care Program & Dr. Meena Cherian for having me as an intern, and I2CRP leaders Dr. Steve Crossman and Dr. Mark Ryan for all their support and mentorship!

Photo Courtesy of Braveen Raghunathan

WHO Intern Day 2013

It's my last week at the WHO, and I was very lucky to be here for this year's WHO Intern Day celebration! 

Set up in the main forum/hall in the center of the WHO headquarters, some of the 250-300 interns at the WHO set up tables with food and drink tasting and music from around the world. Interns showcased steps to international beats, including Nigerian Etighi, Ghananian Azonto, various Latin, Greek, and Turkish dances, Indian Bollywood, American Hip Hop, and of course, my favorite, Punjabi Bhangra.

 

My fellow WHO Emergency and Essential Surgical Care Program interns, Jimmy, Akshay, and I even convinced our lovely program director, Dr. Cherian, to dance bhangra and bollywood-style with us. 

This year, Intern Day kicked off a major fundraising event for scholarships/stipends to help subsidize expenses specifically for WHO interns from developing countries and underprivileged backgrounds. This is particularly important because all UN/WHO internships remain unpaid, making it significantly unlikely and difficult for students from non-American/Canadian/European nations or students without access to school/family/self/other -sponsorship to participate in valuable WHO intern experiences. Their voices are missing, and particularly given the nature of WHO's work, it's incredibly important to have them here. This year's Intern Day festivities raised $(-will update soon-) for scholarships.

HKSers in Geneva

It was a privilege to visit HKS classmates Dan (MCMPA'12) and Edo (MPA'14) with Subhash (MPP'14) at the World Economic Forum headquarters for lunch and a tour this week.









Earlier this week, Edo, Subhash, Barbara (MPAID'14), and I also enjoyed a dinner and stroll along Lake Geneva.

Weekend Trips -- A Series of Touristy Posts: Part 5

Paris, France

I traveled to Paris with a group of Australian law students studying in Geneva and also met up with HKS '13 classmate and friend from France, Emmanuel. 

Our group stayed in Montmartre, close to the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart), a Parisian Roman Catholic church crowning the butte Montmartre, the highest point in Paris. 









One of my favorite places visited in Paris was the Luxembourg Garden, which is in front of the French Senate palace. 

  

  

I enjoyed the fountains in the courtyard of the Louvre, as well as a fun carnival ride in the Tuileries Garden. 

 

Our group had fun biking through Paris to visit Notre Dame.

I also enjoyed seeing paintings by Monet, van Gogh, and many sculptures at the Musée d'Orsay.

And of course, it was wonderful to visit and climb the Eiffel Tower at night.

  

Weekend Trips -- A Series of Touristy Posts: Part 4

Lyon, France 

A group of interns from WHO, UN, CERN, and I traveled to France to visit the third largest city in the country, Lyon. 

Here are photos that capture just a few of the sights we saw during our time there.

Fourviere Basilica 

Roman Ruins

Lyon is known for excellent food. The best meal I had in the city was at Le Jardin Interieur. As each of our desserts featured different expressions, Wisdom was pretty much all that was left on my cherry pie plate. The food at Le Jardin Interieur was absolutely delicious, and the staff were particularly warm and friendly. The meal was certainly one of the highlights of our time in Lyon.

What do women that are victims of violence need most right now?

If you have a moment, please check out my blog post on KevinMD. 

This post provides a more concise explanation of a neglected issue that requires policy and provider attention when addressing pandemic levels of death and disability due to violence against women. I wrote it because vulnerable women experiencing violence in resource-poor settings face the greatest barriers to accessing life-saving emergency and essential surgical care. 

Special thanks to Dr. Kevin Pho and KevinMD for posting this: Violence against women: save her life and treat her injuries first. 

A tour of the Palais de Nations

After over a month of interning, my fellow interns--James Murphy (a MPH/MD student in his first year at Yale/Mt. Sinai), Farooq Khan (an emergency medicine resident in his final year at McGill)--and I took an afternoon away from the WHO Emergency and Essential Surgical Care office for a guided tour of the Palais des Nations.

The United Nations Office of Geneva (UNOG) receives about 100,000 visitors each year. Though I had traversed some of the Palais halls and meetings rooms during the 66th World Health Assembly, the UNOG guided tour included more historical context to appreciate the views.

The Palais is a beautiful art deco building in Ariana Park and overlooking Lake Geneva. Nearly one kilometer long, the Palais is a legacy of the League of Nations, the world's first global organization created to keep the world safe and at peace after WWI. Though the League failed when it was unsuccessful in countering forces that led to WWII, the United Nations succeeded it when founded in 1945 in Geneva, as a tribute to the city of peace's humanitarian history. While the meeting rooms of the Palais des Nations can seat a total of more than 8,500 people, it is also a "living museum" and home to art donated by Member States, foundations, and individuals as expressions of solidarity for improving international peace.

Source

The guided tour included the Salle des Pas Perdus (the Hall of Lost Steps), allowing for attention to the artworks that were more hidden by WHO stands/booths during the WHA. We also revisited the biggest room in the Palais, the Assembly Hall, where WHA plenary sessions were held.

The guided tour also offered some new views. Particularly breathtaking was the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room, with its domed ceiling sculpture by artist Miquel Barcelo.

I also particularly enjoyed the tour of Ariana Park, the 46-hectare park home to various species of majestic trees, and its memorable Monuments.

The iconic Celestial Sphere was donated in 1939 by the Woodrow Wilson foundation to commemorate the US President's work in creating the League of Nations.

The sphere originally featured 85 gilded constellations and 840 silvered stars and was equipped with a motor to revolve slowly around an axis turned to the Pole Star, though the motor no longer works and needs restoration.












Family by Winston Churchill's granddaughter, Edwina Sandys, was a gift from Anthony and Penny Oppenheimers to UNICEF.

The 4.6-meter high bronze sculpture uses the space between the mother and the father to depict the child.













The red brick Tower of Loneliness was a gift by the Danish artist Per Kirkeby. Standing inside the tower, one is said to experience the alternating contrasts of opening and closing, presence and absence, and light and shade.

Given to the UN for the Dialogues of Peace exhibition, Kirkeby described the themes of the tower as "an eye raised to the sky and a tear which flows." 

The Conquest of Space by Youri Neroda is a gift from the former Soviet Union and dedicated to human success in space conquest.

The two-part monument represents the projection of a spacecraft with a 28-meter tall arrow-shaped plinth, as well as a bronze statue of an astronaut with arms reaching toward the sky, symbolizing human desire for space exploration.














But of all the monuments, the Great Centaur was my absolute favorite.

The Great Centaur by Ernst Neizvestny, a gift from the Russian Federation, is a 4.5-meter high bronze sculpture.

The artist, at the inauguration of his sculpture, said, "Man must struggle to become himself."

The Great Centaur is a wounded giant--rising from a base, representing death, destruction, and chaos, and reaching upward, with his face bare, unmasked.

If you are interested in learning more, I would suggest checking out the UNOG Virtual Tour.