Cheryl Papa
NYS International Affairs Director

IA in Action

• Team up with a local UN Associations-USA member organization and plan to take part in one of their meetings. Ask them to look at Women and Girls Worldwide, Women, Peace and Security or a women's health topic.
• Work with your Sister-to-Sister coalition partners and move toward taking part in UNICEF's Voices of Youth Internet discussions. Include girls in any trips or outings relating to the UN.
• Create an event like Women and Girls Worldwide. Invite all the women's groups you know to discuss UN. Highlight the Commission on the Status of Women, Beijing +5, CEDAW and the Working Group on Girls.
• Get in touch with the San Juan P.R. branch to learn how they have supported the P.R. Committee for UNICEF for over 15 years. One of their members has written a curriculum on the rights of the child in Spanish.
• Provide volunteer tutors to the English as a Second Language program in your schools. Encourage schools to work with the USA Committee for UNIICEF (Trick or Treat) or the Cyberschoolbus on the UN website.
• Look at different ways of funding women's development through micro-economics and UNDP Business Partnerships.

IA Study Groups & More

• Add a UN global perspective when you have a meeting on a local concern. This works well for topics such as Millennium Development Goals, women's health, violence in our schools, sustainable development or HTV/AIDS.
• Encourage your branch leaders to include an ongoing UN global perspective in the branch's regular programming/newsletter.
• Get a speaker or member from UNA-USA to come to a meeting to explain the importance of the UN to our national security.
• Revisit Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy by featuring the Declaration of Human Rights. Include a discussion of the U.S. objections to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Criminal Court.
• Have your financial group discuss how the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund influence the U.S. economy. And discuss why the U.S. payment of UN dues is so important?
• Encourage your branch to follow the progress of the Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
• Sponsor an AAUW public policy meeting. Highlight our support of the UN, CEDAW, the Commission on the Status of Women, UNESCO's Education for All, and Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• Work with archeology, travel and diversity groups to highlight UNESCO. There are great videos on UNESCO's efforts to reopen the Silk Road and the growing number of World Heritage Sites.