Partnerships
The programme of outreach to universities
The programme of outreach to universities was launched in 2007 to overcome succession planning challenges in language services. It seeks to raise awareness about language careers at the United Nations and help candidates to better perform in the Organization’s highly demanding recruitment tests for language staff. To that end, the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management has engaged with various partner universities that specialize in the training of language professionals, either on an ad hoc basis, or through memorandums of understanding (MoU), associated membership agreements and remote practicum agreements. Outreach activities conducted by language staff from the various United Nations duty stations may include in-person or remote training, seminars, presentations, master classes, webinars, and so on. They can be targeted at university students and/or faculty members.
Together, the universities that have signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations on the training of language professionals for the competitive examinations, the universities under associated membership agreement and the United Nations form the “MoU network”. Every two years, the members of the network join together in MoU conferences, alternating between a United Nations location and an MoU university, to review the collaboration, share initiatives, report on past activities and discuss the way forward.
International Annual Meeting on Language Arrangements, Documentation and Publications
The International Annual Meeting on Language Arrangements, Documentation and Publications (IAMLADP) is a forum and network of managers of international organizations employing conference and language service providers, mainly translators and interpreters.
Each year, the Meeting brings together representatives of over 80 intergovernmental and supranational organizations to share knowledge and experiences and discuss subjects of common interest. The overall objective is to enhance the efficiency, quality and cost-effectiveness of conference, language and publishing services within each participating organization.
The Head of the United Nations Department for General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) is the permanent Chair of the Meeting. The Department also provides technical secretariat support to IAMLADP. Topics and issues of common interest are addressed between annual meetings through working groups and task forces.
More information can be found on the IAMLADP website.
Coordination Meeting of Conference Managers
The Coordination Meeting of Conference Managers is an annual meeting of heads of conference management operations from the United Nations Offices at New York, Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi, as well as the regional commissions located in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut and Santiago. The teams from each duty station include other senior managers responsible for main areas of work. The Meeting, which lasts for one or two days, first took place in 2000. The agenda covers a wide range of topics related to conference management. The Head of the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management chairs the meeting, and secretariat support comes from United Nations Headquarters in New York. It typically takes place after IAMLADP in the same venue, but has sometimes taken place before.
The Meeting provides a forum for face-to-face discussion and interaction on policy and cross-cutting matters in the field of conference management. The goal of these meetings is to discuss collaborative implementation of the mandates that are common to all conference servicing operations through open debate, sharing ideas, lessons learned and good practices, and to be a place in which to share experiences in innovation and creativity especially through new technology or different methods of work. The key concept of the Meeting is integrated global management as reflected in multiple General Assembly resolutions on the pattern of conferences. The Meeting produces a confidential internal report that summarizes the deliberations and the way forward.