To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, Gachon University hosted a remarkable workshop. It was the ‘UN-Gachon Global Leadership Workshop’ where eminent persons from the UN personally provided lectures to Gachon University students about the challenges our world is facing currently. The workshop was organized by the office of international affairs of the Gachon University to help students shape the future they want. Let's find out about the ‘UN-Gachon Global Leadership Workshop’, and about the essay contest held after the workshop in detail.

 The ‘UN-Gachon Leadership workshop’ consisted of five programs of lectures hosted through the Webex. A total of five UN eminent persons from various affiliations gave lectures on different topics. Every Gachon University student and postgraduate could enroll in this workshop. The lectures were held at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Korea time. All five lectures were in English and each lecture took less than an hour with 35 minutes of teaching and 15 minutes of Q&A time. Just attending the workshop was sufficient to be admitted as attendance. Students had to also write an essay about the lectures in Korean with a photo of the lecture site within a week after the lecture. After all the attendance is approved, the workshop certificate will be issued.

 On October 7th, 2020, the first lecturer, Mr. Jerome Mellon, who is the secretary-general of the Office of the Assistant Secretary-General for Rule of Law and Security Institutions Department of Peace Operations, spoke about his institution and general information about the United Nations. In the second lecture, Dr. Ying Wang, an associate expert of UNEP gave a speech about the UN Sustainable Development Goals from an environmental perspective with the slogan, “Leave no one behind”. The third lecture was given by Mr. Luca Castellani who is the legal officer of the UN OLA. He taught students about the UN’s contributions to the digital economy by showing websites operated by the UN organization. The fourth lecture was conducted by Dr. Anga R. Timilsina, Global Programme Advisor on Anti-corruption of the UNDP. Under the main theme of anti-corruption, he gave information about the UNDP and social infrastructure response to the Corona virus. Additionally, he also introduced some lessons we could learn from the Corona pandemic. The last lecture was hosted by Ms. Astra Bonini who is the Senior Sustainable Development Officer of the UN DESA. She addressed the UN path from the founding until the 75th anniversary and integrated efforts on Sustainable Development Goals that the UN has been working on. In every Q&A session, the same question was asked, “Why did you want to join the UN and how did you prepare for it?” Surprisingly, all speakers came up with the same answer, which was not to be too sure about a dream too early, to have the courage to experience as much as possible, and to be passionate about the things that you like. These lectures were so much helpful for students who were occupied in finding their path.

 Once all the lectures ended, students were able to participate in the ‘UN-Gachon leadership workshop’ essay contest. Students needed to write at least a three-page essay about the five lectures they had seen; they could choose to write either in English or Korean, but students were encouraged to write in English. The same way they uploaded essays for attendance, the contest application is completed by submitting the essay to the “Gachon WIND UN essay contest” link. All prize winners get certificates. The prize money was five hundred thousand won for the first place (one person), the prize for the second-place winner was three hundred thousand won (one person), the third prize two hundred thousand won (3 people), and the fourth the prize of one hundred thousand won (5 people).

 The ‘UN-Gachon Global Leadership Workshop’ taught students how much effort the United Nations is putting in to make our planet a better place to live and enlighten the importance to preserve nature and to reach hand for neighbors in need. It was a valuable time and lesson learnt on how we should live for the next generations and for the beautiful future. It would be more chances to attend sessions and workshops like "UN Global Leadership".