The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

NEW YORK, Monday—I was talking to you yesterday about our American Association of the United Nations and the support this organization is giving the U.N. in this country, but it is equally important that similar associations be at work actively in all of the other member countries of the U.N. I am not very sure how strong such groups are in other countries, though I am fairly sure such organizations do exist in almost every member nation.

The World Association of the U.N. organization draws all these groups together, but again I feel that my knowledge is very slight of how strong and active their concerted efforts have been. I only hope that if we succeed here in finding a good method of organization we may be useful to other groups in other parts of the world, and I wonder whether the regional pattern of association, which has been established for other purposes, might not be used to strengthen interest in the U.N. and disseminate information more widely.

Perhaps those of us here who are interested in international cooperation might meet more often with the representatives of South and Central America, Mexico and Canada to discuss the problems that must be facing all of us in creating interest in the U.N. and disseminating information about it.

In a meeting the other day I was asked by one woman who represented a political organization how I felt their group might help to increase the knowledge of the work being carried on by the U.N. specialized agencies.

Suddenly I visualized what it would mean if, in a group like this, one woman could undertake to study the work of each specialized agency. She could become fully acquainted with the work of each of the councils and commissions. And I thought of what these reports might bring in human interest stories which, when related to any groups of men and women in any city in the United States, would make them feel the need for work throughout the world to better the lives of human beings and perhaps realize how, through the U.N., this was actually beginning to be done.

It is always a surprise to people when I tell them that the U.N. World Health Organization may send out a team of six or seven people, all of different nationalities. In themselves they are the best object lesson to prove that people of many lands can work together and actually get things done. It is not often realized that before the technical assistance program, which deals so largely with the raising of economic conditions in the world, can be successful, the World Health Organization may have to move in with a program to get rid of malaria, for instance, because the people of the area may be unable otherwise to do a good day's work.

So many of these agencies are interdependent, and as you learn about their work you see a pattern of the lives of human beings throughout our world.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 6, 1953

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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