Tag Archives: 2018

A Postcard From: Nayanthi Peiris ’18

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10383975_10206755186062288_2771633618354351728_nName: Nayanthi Peiris

Year: 2018

Major: Economics

What’s happening? We’d love to hear how your internship is going!

I am currently completing an internship at the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in New York. I’m one of four interns and we were all assigned a Diplomat at the beginning of our respective internships. My Diplomat assigns me various tasks everyday in line with the needs of the Mission and also in line with my interests. As the Sri Lankan Mission is very small in comparison to other missions, there are a good number of meetings at the UN headquarters everyday that the Minister Counsellors are unable to attend. In such cases, they assign interns to attend meetings and write meeting reports.

I just concluded a 1.5 week long conference held in the UN Headquarters which I had to attend everyday as my supervisor was unable to attend it due to other commitments. As part of the conference I had the opportunity to hear from an activist who was formerly a teen radicalized by a large terrorist organization, a lady who lost her husband to gun violence, and other inspiring individuals. The internship so far has been a great opportunity for me to explore various aspects of public policy, diplomacy, and the functioning of the UN as a whole.

I have now spent one month living in New York, and three weeks at my internship. Starting this summer with almost a naive expectation of what it would be like to live in and experience NYC, I can safely say that as of now the city has not let me down. Prior to this experience I had only visited New York for a couple days at a time, and having lived in Sri Lanka prior to starting college at Bryn Mawr, my impressions of New York were mainly borne out of *exaggerated* representations of the city from movies and TV shows. I am so very excited to complete the remainder of my internship, gain a deeper understanding of the UN, and explore more of New York!

A Postcard from: Tauni Robinson ’18

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taunirobinson_beesName: Tauni Robinson

Year: 2018

Major: Geology

What’s happening? We’d love to hear how your internship is going!

This summer I was an intern with PennEnvironment, a statewide non-profit environmental advocacy organization. I was placed on their “No Bees, No Food” campaign to help save the bees and was primarily tasked with convincing the EPA to ban the use of a class of bee-killing pesticide known as Neonicotinoids. Colony Collapse and the general decrease in bee population has been an increasingly common problem for beekeepers across the world, and one cause that scientists have pointed to is the use of Neonics. My main task was to build a coalition of farmers and local restaurants to show support on our letter urging the EPA to ban the use of these pesticides.

I was very excited to learn about campaign organization and was enthusiastic about the amount of responsibility I held as an intern. Interns were the key tacticians on this political campaign targeted at the EPA, so we were planning events, sending out press releases, building strong coalitions, organizing grassroots and grasstops action, petitioning, and crafting multiple Letters-to-the-Editor and Op-Eds all on our own. The best moment of my internship was when I got a huge restaurant chain to sign on to our letter.

Tauni Robinson_Bees Campaign

My favorite part of this internship was getting to speak to all the farmers and restaurant owners because I got to meet some amazing people with very interesting stories. I found out just how many people really care about our pollinators and all the food they provide us with, so I felt like I was doing good for the Earth and that this was highly rewarding work. I also loved the environment I was working in because I was working a 10-5 job in a Center City office but got to spend lots of time outside in parks and city green spaces. Getting to live in Philadelphia and experiencing city life was also definitely a huge plus for me!