Plans Programmes For U.N. Visitors

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31090, 20 June 1966, Page 2

Plans Programmes For U.N. Visitors

(From TUI THOMAS, Womens Editor of “The Press”) One of the New Zealanders at the United Nations is Miss Ngaire Anderson, the only woman I met there who has links with Christchurch. She is now on the staff of the Office of Public Information, planning visitors’ programmes, after five years as supervisor of the guides.

Ngaire Anderson’s background of showing parties of tourists round the Secretariat building, her extensive travelling and her easy from anywhere fit her manner with people well for the job.

Mainly public relatione and partly clerical, it requires someone who knows the layout of the place and where to find information quickly about any aspect of the organisation’s vast work.

After graduating from the Christchurch Teachers' College. she left New Zealand 10 years ago for a working holiday in London and sight-see-ing in Europe. Two years later she set off for the United States as a governess to children of friends. “But this was a rarefied, unreal existence,” she told me tn New York. “I wanted a more down-to-earth job, so I learned to type.” Without emigrating to the United States a girl is very

Mmited in the type of employment available to her. She can work on the staff of a legation or at the United Nations, if she is up to their standards. Ngaire Anderson applied to the United Nations for a job as a guide, and was accepted in 1959. One year later she was put in charge of the team. Five years is the full term as supervisor of guides, so at the end of her time Miss Anderson made a return visit to Britain for a few months. Life at the United Nations, however, had a strong pull on her; she went back at the end of last year and received her present appointment.

Off duty, Miss Anderson does the round of New York concerts whenever she can, skis in the winter and does her own dressmaking. “I refuse to pay the prices asked in New York so I make my own clothes,” she said. The trimly tailored suit in black and red flecked wool she was wearing at the time was one of her own creations. It looked as if it might have come from Saks, Fifth avenue.

One of her hobbies is collecting exotic recipes and trying them out at small dinner parties in her apartment Her recipes are as international as her friends and she can serve a meal that makes any guest feel at home again.