XUNICEF News and Views

What to do la is an occasional musing on what one former staff member has and hasn’t done since leaving UNICEF. This week – Democracy?

What to do la is an occasional musing on what one former staff member has and hasn’t done since leaving UNICEF. This week – Tennis anyone? Tennis is a game I love

What to do la is an occasional musing on what one former staff member has and hasn’t done since leaving UNICEF. This week – Cleaning.

What to do la is an occasional musing on what one former staff member has and hasn’t done since leaving UNICEF. This week – Friends?

What to do la is an occasional musing on what one former staff member has and hasn’t been doing since leaving UNICEF. This week – Uber Driver.

“What to do la” is one of my favourite expressions. I heard it often in Bhutan when I worked there in the early part of this century.

Thank you to the many of you who have been in contact with the XUNICEF Blog over the last few weeks as some of us “new editors” (Joachim Theis, Rob Carr, Soji Adeniya and Tim Sutton) find our feet.

1) What is your name and what was your last assignment with UNICEF?  Tim Sutton, Representative in Sri Lanka. 2) How old do you feel? Don‘t want to put a specific number on it – it varies a little day by day – but generally somewhere in the mid 30s.

This in my view, is a perfect park bench. Look at that view!   A favorite spot to pause when walking our dog, this park bench is in Queen Elizabeth Park just north of Wellington in New Zealand. Hard to imagine that more than 80 years ago this area was the home to more than 16,000 United States Marines training to retake Islands across the Pacific in the Second World War. Sadly 10 Marines died on the beach in front of this bench during a beach landing drill. Ten of the more than 7500 Marines who were killed in the Pacific during that War.

By Tim Sutton So … working from home is the thing now. Why make the daily trip to the office, do our work and then come home again, when you can throw on sweatpants, switch on the laptop and turn your kitchen table into your office. Working from home is now as normal as Mondayitis and casual Fridays and still essential in many places as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic. Working from home helps keep us safe, it’s greener; it can help us be more productive; it can help build teamwork; it saves money; it promotes work life balance. It’s a good thing for you, for me, for the planet, right? Over my last two years with UNICEF, I spent a considerable amount of time working from home, first in response to a terror event and then more recently the pandemic. Online meetings, online trainings, online social events, online collaboration spaces, online coffee, an online Christmas party, we can online anything, anytime, from anywhere. Being able to do all this from home was m...