ATHGO Day One

So the first day of the ATHGO forum on Global Governance has come and gone... I was very surprised at the diversity of students present, there were quite a few international students as well as a very broad age range (I fear I'm the youngest one there)... The program began with a speech by Sharad Sapra, the diretor of the division of communication at UNICEF (he had very interesting ideas on furthering the use of cell phones for purposes of equality, empowerment, and literacy improvement). Today's program also included a speech by the executive director of the UN Fund for International Partnerships, Amir Dossal, as well as a panel presented by the UN ambassadors (permanent missions) of Singapore, China, Syria, and Albania (The ambassador from Singapore was quite witty while the ambassador from Syria was refreshingly blunt in his statements). Several other speakers ensued, and we finally were split into groups towards the end (my group is entirely female, the only single-sex group at the conference, the director said it was unusually random).