The opening speaker for the day, Catherine Bertini, is the senior American official in the United Nations Secretariat.
Ms. Bertini said that she was delighted to be in dialogue with teachers because she believes that "we, the people," acting together, can make a difference. She went on to say that she was raised in Courtland, New York, where she had learned the community values of middle America, and she was now proud to be the senior American in the UN Secretariat.
When Ms. Bertini took over as Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) in Rome, she was happy to find that the people on her international staff all had the same aspirations and commitment to work for better opportunities and a better life for deprived people everywhere. Her work has taken her to trouble spots all over the world. When she first went to Mozambique she had to have a military escort to take her around the country. She has worked in post-civil-war UN programs in Kosovo and East Timor, and now she hopes that peace is also coming to Angola, Sudan, and Somalia. In spite of the terrible shock of the deaths of so many UN staff members in Iraq on August 19, 2003, she believes that the UN would continue to work for a new governmental process in Iraq.
Ms. Bertini stressed that the UN is the international leader in the humanitarian field, bringing clean water, disaster relief, and help to refugees. All of this adds up to a huge agenda, which goes on alongside the work of the UN for peace and security. And it is all voluntarily funded, with the donors requiring strict accounting for all the projects undertaken. The UN also undertakes a wide range of important regulatory work, which gets no publicity, in food safety, in rules for air traffic, in intellectual property, and in disease control. The UN works to ensure that the world stays safe.
The World Food Program has worked in crisis situations in North Korea and the horn of Africa to bring food and water to the people. In Afghanistan, she worked to make it possible for widows, who were not allowed under the Taliban to leave home, to start their own bakeries, and she had ensured that small private schools for girls were able to keep going. Girls need help with nutrition and health care. Far too many women are working night and day to support their families and to bring up their children. Ms. Bertini said that she is passionate about better education for women and girls.
Ms. Bertini gave advice to young people who would like a career at the UN. She suggested that they begin in local community service, get an M.A., learn another language, and try first to become an intern in the UN system.
She concluded by saying that teachers had made all the difference in her life. When she received the World Food Prize in 2003, nothing made her happier than to see her fourth-grade teacher sitting in the front row at the ceremony.
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