My name is
Austin Schiano. I first came in contact with the UN system when I was a student
at Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey. Drew is one of the very few schools
in the United States that has a program which allows students to enter the UN
as observers while they would simultaneously take classes at night about the UN
system from a professor. The Drew Professor was assisted by an individual called
Jean Grazarian, who was in his nineties at the time, but had been one of the
leader administrators in the UN Security Council for many years. That offered
us all unbelievable insight into the organization, along with peace and
conflict at the highest levels since the founding of the United Nations. He
told us he regularly had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt. It was amazing!
This led me to
do my Masters at NYU, which is when I first started interning with the UN, specifically
for the UN Millennium Campaign. From that point onwards, I began to work on
mobilizing the earliest stages of the MY World 2015 Survey, which at the
time was still in its early stages of development. From that point onwards, I
became involved with the World We Want 2015. For the entire time
in Grad School at the NYU Center for Global Affairs, I was the World
We Want 2015 coordination associate.
When I was
participating in the UN semester, I met a girl named Shamilla Kohestani. She
was Afghan, and had started the Afghan Women's Soccer team. She had lived under
the Taliban Rule, and had come to the USA to study. Luckily for me, she was in
my program at Drew. Travelling into the city with her every week to learn about
the international system was something I can never underestimate as an
experience in my life. She was given the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2006! When
I was at NYU, I completed a thesis on the Taliban, because I thought it was
something I needed to understand.
It was after
this that I became involved with the Give Me 5 campaign. It was founded by Mr
Juan E Chebly. Juan had been the
coordinator for the World We Want 2015, and I always had tremendous respect for his
work. So, when Juan came to me with this idea, we knew it was something we
could build on, having engaged in various advocacy platforms, campaigns, and
committees. I have truly come to see that the value of the UN is not always in
the direct strength which the organization can exert, which ultimately can be
quite limited. It’s challenging, for a variety of reasons, for an institution
to exert power over member states.
The strength of
the UN however, is that it creates and facilitates a space for numerous
dialogues to ensue and be fostered. The
Give Me 5 campaign is built to support in this process. Apart from our direct
mission of advocacy, we are designed around an innovative team of young global
professionals, who are trying to further citizen engagement with the UN, and
various political systems.
We are
supportive of various projects of citizen engagement, including the MY World
2030 survey, the World We Want platform, UNICEF's the World's Largest
Lesson, the MY UNEA site (which has
innovative data tools and consultations and is fostered by UNEP for the
upcoming UN Environmental Assembly), The Sunscious
live site (which culminates POSITIVE news from around the world), and an
innovative media project called climate 2020 or bust, which is seeking to
create videos around the pressing issues of climate change. Our partners are
always growing, and we do all we can to support.
As partnerships
manager, I have spoken at several events in the UN representing Give Me 5, most
recently the UN Association members’ day, which was a fantastic daylong
conference by the organization which fosters and encourages UN participation at
local levels in the US. I had the privilege to speak alongside a representative
of 350.org (who organized the climate march in NYC), the director of the NYC
office on sustainability, and a long time employee of the US Environmental
Protection Agency. At the very end of the event, the UK and Jordanian PR's
spoke on their nations position in the Security Council, and discussed the need
and possibility of SC reform. That was
great.
One of our
challenges so far has been that as a growing organization, of course, there is
always the concern of balancing out your team members’ time, as we are all
doing this out of a passion to make a change.
Next to that, what is difficult, but I would really like to think of
more as an opportunity, is being able to identify exactly what your narrative
is, and how people can communicate it.
The biggest fact
is that when you are dealing in issues of military spending, or domestic funds
going internationally, there is an entire bureaucracy of complex issues which
exist simultaneously with your cause. Anyone who has dealt in these issues,
knows that you are not going to achieve success without presenting yourself in
a way that can be interpreted and understood, without being confrontational to
nations interests. It’s not about taking away money from anyone to be less
safe, it’s about trying to raise awareness of the paradigm for a peaceful
society. Things only really happen if the people want them to, and that’s what
makes citizen engagement and awareness so important.
In the environment
we are working within, our colleagues have been incredibly receptive of our
work. That being said, I think one of
the most difficult things is building a space for yourself in the UN system,
which is an overarching, and occasionally difficult bureaucracy to operate in.
I feel as if the best way to deal with this is by working with established
partners, committees, practitioners, and supportive nation-states to build
social capital. It’s a matter of figuring out what you do well, and how this
can be of benefit to others. There is often a huge intellectual awareness
divide between domestic military institutions, and the UN in general. For this
reason, it is integral to grow and further research which attempts to bridge
the two gaps.
What keeps me
going in the work that I do is that inert beauty and surprise which you find in
international environments, and global discussion. We come into this work with
the understanding that you’re not going to be able to solve every problem, and
that can be really challenging for many I think at an emotional level. We exist
in a society that allows for previously inconceivable ways to use and promulgate information. I have also worked with a News Organization,
News Deeply, that builds single issue expert news sites around global issues. We
have sites on Syria, Ebola, Water Scarcity, the Arctic, Financial Inclusion,
and recently, Refugees. Centralizing information is key. Decisions are often
made with limited information, and it's not always policy makers fault. We need
to create the tools and spaces which promote this work.
The Give Me 5
campaign has plans to activate to our fullest extent. It's really about
creating networks, and getting our message out there. The upcoming DPI/NGO
Conference in Korea, along with the World Humanitarian Summit in Turkey will be
a space for us to work with partners that can help bring our work to political
forum. We are open to many different options, and look forward to a hopeful
fundraiser in the coming months.