Introduction to MUN
MUN was all about how the refugee crisis is impacting the world today. In June 2016, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) reported that at the end of 2014, there were 59.5 million refugees in the world and that is the highest number ever recorded. Each person was given a country to represent and debate about what they would do to help in the refugee crisis. My committee number was committee number 2.
I was not given a country because I went the extra mile and decided to become a co-chair. I wanted to become chair but I decided to go co-chair because I wasn't that experienced in MUN and Aleia was more experienced at being a chair.
I was not given a country because I went the extra mile and decided to become a co-chair. I wanted to become chair but I decided to go co-chair because I wasn't that experienced in MUN and Aleia was more experienced at being a chair.
Being Co-Chair/ Conference Experience
Co-Chair was a challenging task to take on because even though you don't do as much work as a Chair, you still do hard work and have to be on top of everything. Being Co-Chair in my committee, I had to take notes on the whole conference to keep track of everything that was being said. I did this so if someone said something important, it wouldn't be forgotten and could be pulled straight out of my notes. I did quite the note taking and it was rather challenging because there were some points where I didn't even know what people said and had to question mark it. This was rather frustrating because I had to take lightning fast notes and delegates would talk one sentence in the matter of 3 seconds. By the time I had written their country, the Chair would've already moved on to another delegate and repeat the same process. I also had to make suggestions to the Chair on what we should do next and correct the Chair if they said something wrong, WHILE taking down notes. This project really took my multi-tasking skills to a whole new level but in the end, I benefited from them and can do two things a bit better and faster.
Key Moment
To be honest, something was bound to go wrong during the conference and of course, something did. My committee didn't really like to do moderated caucus (1 person speaking at a time), so there would just be times of awkward silence where no one would speak and both chairs would have to break the silence and switch the topic. Moderated caucus didn't go well until the end but I wished it could've been better and people would've spoken.
On the other hand, UNmoderated caucus (everyone gets up and talks about the topic) was a totally different story. There were sometimes where my committee would go wild and keep extending the time just to keep talking about the topic. I really liked this because it gave ME a chance to rest my poor hand for a good while but also because the delegates would get really far into the topic. This was great because delegates would then come up with great resolutions and (almost) everyone would be on the right track. In the end, because of so much unmoderated caucus, people really got to communicate and all 3 of our resolutions passed!
On the other hand, UNmoderated caucus (everyone gets up and talks about the topic) was a totally different story. There were sometimes where my committee would go wild and keep extending the time just to keep talking about the topic. I really liked this because it gave ME a chance to rest my poor hand for a good while but also because the delegates would get really far into the topic. This was great because delegates would then come up with great resolutions and (almost) everyone would be on the right track. In the end, because of so much unmoderated caucus, people really got to communicate and all 3 of our resolutions passed!
