Students gain experience with FAO internship
United Nations agency’s energy departments host undergraduates for three-week placement.
Three undergraduate students have undertaken work placements with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), working remotely with teams based in their Rome headquarters.
Luming Yang, Dylan Edgar and Martin Heriard-Dubreuil, all students in Global Agriculture and Food Security, each spent three weeks working with the FAO.
Learning into practice
Ms Yang was tasked with researching energy in agri-food systems in the green recovery, and food loss via storage in developing countries, in which she was able to apply research skills and gain practice in producing presentations.
Mr Edgar helped produce a report of key objectives relating to the FAO’s European Green Deal and the Africa-EU Partnership. This required summarising relevant material from a large pool of information, drawing on literature review skills gained in written assessments.
Mr Heriard-Dubreuil was placed with the Energy in Agriculture team.
The students also joined seminars to gain an overview of FAO work, and had the opportunity to meet team members in Rwanda and Zambia.
Insights into the daily routine of the FAO, and knowledge of their projects in countries suffering from food insecurity, remind me how difficult it is to feed every individual on this planet without destroying the environment. This experience will inspire me to study and work harder to contribute to easing food insecurity.
The knowledge and expertise of the FAO team and the amount and quality of work that they dedicate to their projects was massively impressive. This is what I’ll remember most about the placement, and what I’ll be aspiring to imitate.