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My United Nations Internship: How It Enriched My Knowledge of the Sustainable Development Goals

  • Abbigail Pearman

on  October 28, 2024

I’m an event coordinator at Rise Against Hunger, helping to grow the movement to end hunger by facilitating meal packaging events with volunteers. I’m also a student, currently working toward my Master’s in Public Health in Health Equity, Social Justice and Human Rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As I pursue my master’s degree, I had the opportunity to intern at the United Nations Headquarters (UNHQ) in New York City this summer. This enriching experience taught me so much about collaboration within the United Nations (UN), accessibility and disability inclusion, the Sustainable Development Goals and how Rise Against Hunger’s mission plays a part in these goals. 

My internship, which focused on accessibility, at UNHQ served as practical hours of experience for my master’s program. During the two-month internship, I worked on projects, policy statements and guidelines for increasing accessibility and disability inclusion within the UN system, specifically focusing on meetings, conferences and events hosted by UNHQ. I also assisted in the facilitation of many meetings, including Security Council meetings and the 17th Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

All work of the United Nations, its member states (most of the countries in the world) and international NGOs (like Rise Against Hunger) are guided by the goals for the world agreed upon by the UN member states. Currently, these are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 goals set to be achieved by 2030 that are focused on building “peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” 

During my internship, I gained a deeper understanding of how interconnected the Sustainable Development Goals are. Rise Against Hunger’s work directly supports Goal #2: Zero Hunger, but Goal #1: No Poverty and Goal #16: Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions, as well as all of the SDGS, cannot be achieved without also achieving Goal #2. Achieving one goal is interwoven with achieving the others, underscoring the importance of all 17 goals.

These goals are also fully inclusive. No goal is met if it does not include all people, so it is imperative to increase knowledge, awareness and intentional inclusion of the most vulnerable populations in any and all work toward the SDGs. Persons with disabilities are the largest minority group in the world and are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of poverty, hunger, violence and disasters due to systemic barriers to inclusion. An important step toward the intentional inclusion of persons with disabilities in sustainable development work is ensuring they are able to fully access and participate in UN meetings where their unique perspectives can be considered in decision-making at the highest international level. 

For the global community to make progress toward these goals, “which are an urgent call for action by all countries…in global partnership,” it is important for organizations to align their work with the SDGs and collaborate for the benefit of all. 

An important call to action used by the disability community is “nothing about us without us,” which stresses the importance of those closest to any issue being included in the decision-making. This principle extends to all work toward the SDGs, including Goal #2: Zero Hunger. At Rise Against Hunger, we emphasize that all of our work to reduce hunger is informed by the communities served. We work alongside local leaders to implement sustainable agriculture and income-generating projects that harness the strengths of their own communities and address their specific challenges to support long-term solutions to food security. This empowers communities to become self-reliant and thrive. For example, the Empowering Leaders Through Nutrition-Smart Agriculture project started from an interest from Hope for South Sudan, a residential school, to produce its own food. Rise Against Hunger works closely alongside in-country partner Lift Up the Vulnerable and the school to support this goal. Hope for South Sudan staff and community leaders participate in skills training that build capacity in crop production for consumption and income generation. This supports Hope for South Sudan as they work toward long-term, sustainable food security for its nearly 500 students, staff and volunteers, and it ensures the community served is included in the development and implementation of the project every step of the way.

My experiences at the UN and Rise Against Hunger have shown me that all people are deeply connected to each other, emphasizing the importance of international collaboration for our collective wellbeing. To solve our world’s challenges and create communities where people can thrive requires us all to work together with the understanding that impact on one person impacts us all. This is a core theme of my Master’s in Public Health training that I practice in my work at Rise Against Hunger as I engage volunteers to support others worldwide that they don’t know. It is a powerful and necessary practice to not only care for your own community, but to extend that care to people across the world.

About the Author

Abbi joined Rise Against Hunger in April 2021. In her role as an event coordinator, she facilitates meal packaging events with volunteers and helps to grow the movement to end world hunger.

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.