SUMMER SCHOLARS BLOG: Madeleine Dejean

View over Johannesburg, where the UNFPA’s ESARO is located.

During this summer, I had the opportunity to work with the UNFPA East and Southern Africa Regional Office’s (ESARO) Evidence, Knowledge, and Innovation (EKI) team. This team focuses on facilitating evidence-based decision making and enhancing coordination across the ESARO and the 23 UNFPA East and Southern Africa country offices. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my fellowship was delayed by a year and was conducted virtually from New York City. Despite the challenges presented by the time difference, and not having the opportunity to work as directly with my colleagues, I nonetheless learned a lot about UNFPA’s work, as well as its successes and challenges.

The UNFPA ESARO office implements programming and policy and enhances coordination across the East and Southern Africa region on issue areas such as family planning, sexual and reproductive health, women’s rights, and population, as well as cross cutting factors affecting these core sectors. My role focused on providing support to the EKI team in developing and refineing research, knowledge, and evidence products related to population dynamics and other emerging issues like climate change, migration and urbanization.

I worked with the EKI team to help identify and develop an action plan for updating and cleaning the knowledge management system, including the “Knowledge Hub” intranet site and the internal shared filing structure. I reviewed these systems and identified successes and challenges around system upkeep, identifying opportunities to improve user experience and streamline knowledge management processes. This allows for offices and teams to more effectively coordinate and collaborate across programs, preventing teams from working in a vacuum. Most critically, it allows teams to draw on evidence, lessons, and best practices to facilitate more responsive and context-driven programs, avoiding duplication of efforts. This increased collaboration, coordination, and responsiveness enables the regional office and the 23 country offices to achieve greater impact in the SDGs relevant to UNFPA’s mandate and objectives in the region.

This was my first experience working in a multilateral organization, and I feel that my biggest take away from this summer was learning about a new work culture and pace, and being exposed to a new outlook towards development efforts. Prior to my graduate program, I worked for development consulting firms in which the culture is much more action-oriented and fast-paced, focused on on-the-ground implementation of programs. In the ESARO office, the pace was slower, and more focused on reporting results, advancing policy and diplomacy, and contributing to industry thought leadership. Exposure to this other side of the international development field was a valuable learning experience as it enabled me to develop a more holistic understanding and a broader picture of field and network as a whole, which I believe will be an asset to my career and future work. 

Overall, thanks to the UNA-NYC Summer Scholars Fellowship, I was able to contribute to the ESARO office’s efforts to enhance coordination, collaboration, and evidence-based decision making to further UNFPA’s critical work in the region in advancing SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 5 (gender equality), and SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals).

Our Summer Scholars Blog showcases our fellows’ experiences with the UN agencies and non-governmental organizations they worked with this summer. Learn more about our Summer Scholars Fellowship program and this year’s other fellows here.