On the 21st of February, we went to the office of the United Nations for Armenia within the framework of the “Getting acquainted with the institutions” project. We were hosted by the United Nations Armenia team, including Armine Petrosyan, National Information Officer at United Nations; Niels Scott, Resident Coordinator a.i.; Zaruhi Tonoyan, Program Coordinator at UNFPA (UN Population Fund) Armenia. They have prepared a whole meeting agenda, which included an introduction part, presentation and informative part, activity, and book-giving part. As our meeting took a place right after the book-giving day, UNFPA decided to share with us their few books related to children, and a new one, which is called “50 Women with Disabilities Who Changed the World”. We even had an opportunity of meeting its co-author, Writer, Poet, and Editor-in-Chief at the Text Platform Hasmik Simonian, who was happy and excited to meet us at the UN. As I mentioned before, at the start of our meeting we introduced ourselves and talked a little about our experiences, hobbies, skills, and goals. Later on, Armenie told us that our group from «Mkhitar Sebastatsi» was one of the most active and motivated students out of those she met before. It was also a pleasure for all of us to have an opportunity of sharing the knowledge and experience that we had. Nextly, we had a little meeting with Niels Scott, who shared his emotions and excitement after our introduction. It was his first day in Armenia after a long flight from Africa, and he decided to take a part in our UN meeting. Later, we had a funny activity part, when we talked and tried on ourselves some disabilities, which are very common in the world. E.g. blindness, deafness, and so on. The main goal of the activity was to let its participants feel and see the complications that disabled people face every day. Then we shared our thoughts about the games. On the one hand, we had a great time helping each other with our problems and trying to solve them, but on the other hand, all of the problems that we faced in real life could have been impossible to solve even with a good friend next to us. Then, we had a short quiz about the UN and SDGs, after which we had a winner: Amalia, who got an extra present for her excellent answers. And lastly, we had a short talk with Hasmik Simonian and a book-giving moment, which was an adorable moment for all of us. We had ourselves many books, stickers, bracelets with SDGs, and so on. It was a true pleasure being at UN with such an amazing and professional team. We enjoyed every moment there and looking forward to our next meeting and events together.
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