The IAEA's Vienna headquarters regularly plays host to thousands of external visitors: from technical experts to Member State dignitaries to local Austrians participating in guided tours. But each year in April, the Vienna International Centre welcomes a special group whose members differ from the typical conference attendees in a number of ways -- they are all between 11 and 16 years old, they are all students, and they are all female.

Each year in late April, the City of Vienna sponsors Daughter's Day, or 'Wiener Toechtertag,' an annual and city-wide event which encourages parents to bring their daughters to their workplaces, to learn about their profession and their industry. This year, nearly 40 IAEA staff members brought their daughters with them to work, where the young women received lectures on cybersecurity, presentations on radiotherapy, and tours of the IAEA's Satellite Imagery Laboratories.

The final event of the day was moderated by Francis Campbell, a Training Officer in the IAEA's Department of Technical Cooperation. Although Mr Campbell is more accustomed to presenting the fundamentals of project design and programme management to the National Liaison Officers of Member States, on April 24, he delivered a similar presentation to 45 young students.

After the short lecture, the daughters were divided into groups-each group represented the various stakeholders of a fictitious Member State, and was given a fixed budget of 500,000€. The daughters were then asked to select which technical cooperation projects to finance and pursue. What followed was 30 minutes of tough negotiations, last-minute bargaining and even heated debates but, in the end, each group successfully came to an agreement and allocated their budgets. The children left the Vienna International Centre with a more comprehensive understanding of their parents' work and with a complimentary goodie bag from the Department of Technical Cooperation!