Peking University, April 2, 2017: On the morning of March 30, Ms. Rana Flowers, delegate of The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in China and Mr. Douglas Noble, vice-delegate,  paid a visit to Peking University with their team. PKU Council Vice Chairman Ye Jingyi and PKU Vice President Li Yansong welcomed the delegation and held a meeting with them at the east meeting room of Linhuxuan. Zheng Ruqing, vice director of Office of International Relations and Zhang Lixin, officer of the PKU Student Career Center took part in the meeting.

Rana Flowers and Douglas Noble introduced related information about UNICEF in China. As one of the largest and most respected UN organizations, UNICEF had conducted a close cooperation with Chinese government. In recent years, they had made a good progress towards the projects in China, especially in the areas of children’s protection and development, healthcare, poverty reduction and policy promotion .

Rana Flowers said that she hoped to strengthen the cooperation with PKU in three ways. First, they would increase the amount of internship projects and encourage PKU students to do internships at UNICEF in China. Second, they hoped to expand areas of research cooperation and use rich academic resources of PKU to carry out helpful researches on children and women issues. Third, basing on PKU, they expected to gather the intelligence resources and attract more influential experts and professors to participate in the related researches of UNICEF. They hoped to improve the policy conversion rate and deliver the beneficial voice to the domestic and international society more effectively.

Ye Jingyi thought highly of the achievements of UNICEF in China. She said that the goal of PKU to cultivate diversified and international talents is accordant with UNICEF. Recently, the PKU Student Career Center set up the International Organization Talents Office. By building a bridge between students and international organizations, the Office aims to provide consultations and job opportunities for students who wanted to work in international organizations and help the international organizations to recruit excellent young talents. The establishment of the Office is of great significance to enhance the bilateral cooperation on talent training and internship projects between PKU and UNICEF. Besides, PKU had a wide range of subjects with great advantages on those related to the areas on which UNICEF focused. She believed that PKU would have a good cooperation on academic researches with UNICEF.

Li Yansong added that PKU were recently negotiating with UNICEF on talent cultivation and would sign relevant contracts soon. He believed that this meeting with UNICEF in China would deepen the cooperation and expand the channels of internships for students. Meanwhile, there would be much space for the cooperation of academic researches and policy conversion between UNICEF and relevant institutes and subjects in PKU represented by the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development. 

Later, Zhang Lixin presented the work of International Organization Talents Office including the launch of international organizations job information website (io.scc.pku.edu.cn), the codification of relevant textbooks about international organizations, the running of relevant courses and the establishment of the talent bank. Zheng Ruqing introduced the possible fields in which PKU could cooperate with UNICEF.

At last, Ye Jingyi invited Rana Flowers and her team to take part in the international organization career course of PKU known as “IO Course” and give introductions and professional guidance to PKU students who aspire to do internships in international organizations.

Written by: Chen Guanlan
Edited by: Yan Shengnan
Source: PKU News (Chinese)