Model United Nations

Model United Nations aims to educate students about current events, topics in international relations, and how the United Nations is built up, and their agenda. Students role-play as diplomats representing a nation in a committee of the United Nations (security council etc.). We will receive a country, investigate its international issues, and then develop solutions to world problems. We will get to go to conferences in Nairobi, and perhaps later on, in different countries.

The skills that you need for, or will get out of MUN are public speaking, group communication, research, policy analysis, good listening, negotiating/debating, conflict resolution, and note taking.

In the first MUN meeting, Dr. Wilder told us about MUN, for example what it will teach us, and how we will benefit from it. He also informed us about the various conferences, and debates we are going to have. We all had to sign are names on a piece of paper, write what weeks we were coming, and whether or not we had done MUN before.

In the next few meetings we had a quiz on the structure of the UN, and how it was formed, etc. We also had to come up with a resolution for a world problem, and read it to the rest of the group. I didn't know much about the UN, only a little that I had learned in middle school last year so this was hard for me.

I think that this will be a great experience, and that I will learn a lot from it. However, I know that it's going to be a huge challenge. I may have difficulty coping with the work load, and the public speaking part. I will be able to apply what I learn in MUN, in a variety of experiances outside, or even inside, of school.