On Monday, December 4 UNA-GB celebrated our 13th annual UN Day Luncheon. Hurricane Sandy may have interfered with our plans to celebrate on October 29th but that could not stop the Luncheon from happening and being a fun and informational event for all. Celebrating at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, we took this chance to honor Brazil, our growing education program and corporations that show strong corporate social responsibility. These businesses included members of the UN Global Compact, Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative (PRI), and Principles for Responsible Management Education. All of these groups are dedicated to championing the cause of human rights, labor laws and above all anti-corruption. seeing so many organizations working to fight these problems that have plagued us for centuries is enough to give one hope for the future. If one person can make a difference then think of what we can all do together.
Along with speeches from our wonderful sponsors we were fortunate to have the Consul General of Brazil, Ambassador Fernando de Mello Barreto, join us as our keynote speaker for the event. He spoke of Brazil’s rising stature in the world as a global power as well as its impressive reduction of deforestation in the Brazilian jungles. Following his speech there was a brief Q&A with the ambassador which proved quite informative as well as entertaining.
(Ambassador Fernando de Mello Barreto addressing the audience)
On top of all these wonderful guests we also took time to hear from our very own fearless leaders, Lena Granberg and Richard Golob as they talked about the importance of events like these in the global community as we move forward into the future. The generosity of our guests at events such as this help expand our education programs, which currently reach around 3,000 students per year in Massachusetts.
All in all, we here at UNA-GB are pleased that everyone could make it out to celebrate the UN at the luncheon, regardless of the rescheduling and would like to thank, from the bottom of our hearts, everyone that supported us on Tuesday.
That’s it for this semester of interns, but don’t worry, we’ll be back after the holidays!