MUN (Model United Nations) is a massive program in which thousands of people participate in every year. It simulates exactly how a UN meeting goes about and places you in a similar situation. There are MUN’s all around the world and some MUN’s are even hosted by schools. I had enrolled for MUN in my school. It was and E-MUN meaning it was online.
My MUN experience
I didn’t know what to expect much as it was my first MUN, i was part of the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) committee which prioritized on the safe storage of Hazardous waste. The main part was the GSL- General speakers list, in which we would give our countries stance on storage of these wastes. So we would have an mock-GSL in which they would decide our countries. I was given the delegation of France. The second part was Moderated Caucus in which we were supposed to raise an Topic of our choice and if it had gotten enough votes to pass we would have to speak on it On the spot. There were many more procedures but i’m only here to talk about my experience not explain the MUN, so here we go! There were a few difficulties along the way as many people had technical issues for example they had bad network or Mic issues. It was a really time-consuming program which had lasted for 2 days and a total time period of 12 hours. I had won the Best debutant award in my committee and our committee had also won the Best Committee award. We had 5 committees which were UNEP, WHO, ECO-SOC, DISEC and UNWomen. Each committee would focus on different Agendas.
The impact of MUN
I felt that i had changed after the MUN.
- speaking: It had improved my speaking drastically and it was a real confidence booster. I think it improved my confidence as i had to present and 1 minute 30 seconds speech in front of around 20 people, and as i practiced my speeches i could feel the improvement, so i feel that it’s an great way to improve public speaking Qualities.
- Respect: A lot of respect was needed while attending the program. When you wanted to ask a question or state a point you would have to raise your hand and wait for the person in charge to Acknowledge you and only once they have you would be able to speak. If you had cut them off in-between or speak without being acknowledged, they would warn you or just ignore you, sometimes they can even suspend you for a short time period for example 5 minutes. We couldn’t use informal words, for example if i was asking someone a question i would have to say “The delegate of XYZ (Your countries name) would like to raise a point of information”, With so many stern rules like this it was bound to straighten your attitude.
- Knowledge: When i entered the MUN i hardly knew anything about my committees agenda (Storage of Hazardous waste) but as i researched more and listening to the speech of all members i got to learn so many knew things that i had never came across. I also learned so much more about the country was assigned (France) and i had also found out about how France stores it’s waste and how it had helped Beirut recover from the devastating blast.