Student blogs

Following a post about my extra curriculum activities, I would like to share one of the proud moment. As part of the SI-KI board member, we did organise SI funded visit to UN City, WHO head office in May 2022. Many of us studying in KI are in health related course and officially visiting to WHO Head office is one of the very exciting occasion for us.

Planning

We started the planning from early February by contacting to WHO head office for the available date to visit officially as KI students. We were then given a date in May with the requirement of minimum 20 students. We then approached SI for pre-approval of the trip funding and started advertising fellow students to join.

Although the funding was only eligible for students who are receiving SI scholarship awards between 2020-2023, we also open to all other students but it would be with self funding.

We later realised there was not enough SI students in KI to meet 20 students target. Hence we approached SI-Uppsala student organisation from Uppsala University. Through strategic collaboration with Uppsala team, we finally managed to pull combined total of 23 participants.

Expense

For those who receive SI scholar awards, funding was provided by SI and eligible to reclaim:

• Travel charges: Return train tickets (average 600 SEK)
• Copenhagen city pass (24 hours – cost around 80 DKr ~ 115 SEK)
• Foods (one course meal upto 150 SEK)

Hotel expense was however self funding. We chose to stay at Urban House Copenhagen by Meininger which located in city centre. Decent hotel, excellent location and relatively cheap price. Despite it was shared rooms and it only cost us 277 SEK per person per night.

SI had pre-approved the budget and our finance manager (board member) was very efficient in pre-trip collection of accommodation fee, buying travel tickets for each person, booking hotel and reimbursing food bill and Copenhagen city pass within 2 days after the trip. Although our finance manager couldn’t make it to the trip, he was very supportive remotely throughout.

Travel schedule

We provided 3 options of train travel schedule and used SJ regional train:

• Group1 – Afternoon train – Those who have no lecture can go with this early train group and arrive to the city in the evening (one day before the visit). They can roam around the city at night time and relax at hotel.

• Group2 – Late night train – Those who have lecture or work and want to sleep over night. This group only arrive to Copenhagen around 1 AM. Straight to hotel bed and get refresh for the next day.

• Group3 – Event day, Morning train – Those who only could come for the WHO visit and having very tight schedule. This group arrive around mid-day and straight joining us at UN City.

Although the purchasing of the tickets and planning was smooth, we faced a unexpected hiccup for Group1 as the connecting train between Uppsala and Stockholm got cancelled on that morning and as a consequence, students from Uppsala were unable to make in time to catch Group1 train leaving from Stockholm central station. We then have to contact the train company and arrange for them in changing ticket to later time. Apart from that the overall trip had no other issues.

UN City day

The plan was for UN city to give us the full building tour, souvenir shops and the presentation. Due to the unforeseen circumstance, they had to cut short of building tour and limited to only a few places. The presentation took around one and half hour and it was carried out by Dr. Dina Pfeifer (WHO) on Pandemic preparedness and infectious disease. She also explained us about UN City’s building’s sustainable design. One memorable quote for the day was “She proudly mentioned that anyone getting into the building has to go through a single available security check-point as the rest of the building is surrounded by water.”

Inside UN city, photo credit: May

Copenhagen city

Some of us had some spare time to explore the city around after the visit and many of us agreed that the city is very cozy and lovely to go around. Temperature in May was also okay and luckily it was also the sunny day. We noticed the foods were quite expensive though.

Myself did take the second travel group due to the late lecture schedule and hence did not have much time to go around in city. I will, however, willing to go back again sometime this year and also highly recommend you to pay a visit if you could. Both to Copenhagen city and inspiring UN city of WHO.

As usual, please reach me out for any questions you may have. Happy to help.