Model United Nations

Last week a group of 11 students travelled to Nairobi, Kenya for the Model United Nations conference. They joined over 400 Middle School students from around East Africa and this year there was also a school from Nigeria. The students are very lucky to be able to use the UN headquarters for Africa and their conference facilities.

The theme of this year’s conference was Ubuntu: I am because you are. “The theme represents the compassion and solidarity of humans worldwide, speaking for the many cultures and individuals on this planet.”

At the start of the day the students would all meet together for the “General Assembly” and each morning there was a different speaker who had inspiring words for the students. Then the students would split into the different conference rooms for their committees. Once in these committees students would debate proposals from the various countries, known as a resolution.

There are a number of different proceedings that the students had to learn in order to participate effectively in the debate. After initially feeling overwhelmed on the first day our students started to put themselves forward to speak from day 2 onwards. By the final day nearly all of them had spoken in front of a large number of their peers and sounded very professional doing so.

Our trip was not all hard work. After we finished for the day we visited Two Rivers Mall and Village Market. The students bounced off some excess energy at the Trampoline Park and tried Burger King.

We were so proud of our students in how they represented the school and challenged themselves and put themselves out of their comfort zone. Already they are discussing writing resolutions for next year and how they can better prepare themselves.