Internship at UNICEF Headquarters from Master Student (Yudai ISHII)

From March 4^th to April 30^th, 2022, I conducted an online internship under Dr. Peggy Kelly who is a Statistics and Monitoring Specialist at UNICEF New York Headquarters. During this internship, I carried out data analysis and literature review on education and gender with the aim to support an UNICEF report. Using statistical data on education from the World Bank and UNESCO, I extracted basic reading comprehension and people not engaged in education, employment or training (NEET) ratios in countries around the world, calculated gender differences, and created a classification table for each region. From the table I created, it was found that women tended to become NEETs who do not go to school, do not work, and do not receive vocational training, even though they had better basic reading comprehension skills. Then, I have identified what kind of background is involved through reports from international organizations as well as previous studies.

There are two things I learned through the above research works. The first point is how I can incorporate the perspectives, standards, and norms into any type of my work. For instance, the perspective of analysis will change depending on each international organization. Especially at UNICEF, I learned the importance of focusing on low-income countries and that it is necessary to use cases of low-income countries to develop discussions when compiling literature.

Second, I realized that multitasking skills are very important. It is essential to have the ability to make a solid work plan for myself and to proceed with various tasks at the same time. In addition, being able to perform statistical analysis is also an important skill, but more than that, it is essential to consider what is the problem, how to approach it, and what are the options for solving problems. I could also learn this strong thinking ability which was important in shaping analysis.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Senior Advisor Dr. Suguru Mizunoya and my direct supervisor Statistics and Monitoring Specialist Dr. Peggy Kelly for accepting me for the online internship at UNICEF New York Headquarters. Finally, I sincerely appreciate my academic advisor, Professor Keiichi Ogawa for arranging and providing me with such a valuable internship opportunity.

Authored by Yudai Ishii (Master’s Student)