Church and Society Fellow visits UN office
This week I visited the office of General Board of Church and Society in New York City. The purpose of my travel was to understand the work I am doing that is related to Global Migration issues and to see how the office functions with other agencies and NGOs at the Church Center for the United Nations.
We were able to attend a United Nations meeting on Financial Solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to tour the United Nations building. It is sometimes better to see a thing one time than to hear about it a hundred times because seeing and hearing are two different things.
Both global and local
My supervisor (Levi Bautista) has changed the way of my thinking while I had an orientation with him. He had me think about how the perspectives we have can be changed depending on the situations we are in. For instance, we usually think that local and global are separated, but they are so related in the context of where we live right now. He explained the glocal is where God’s ministry of transformation and liberation happens. I was inspired by this idea. It helped me to comprehend our work and highlighted my responsibility as a person who is working for these issues to be part of making a better world.
The work of both offices of the General Board of Church and Society in Washington D.C. and in New York is truly valuable and admirable. Where I have seen God most visibly while a part of this internship program so far is that I have had an opportunity to learn from the both offices about advocacy, education, and connection. It has been five weeks. I am so happy and humbled to be here at this position with great leaders, where so many interns have come before me and so many will follow.
