Our contributions towards a better tomorrow

On the auspicious day of teachers day where the students get a opportunity to in act their teachers and teach the other students .The students of NEW INDIAN MODEL SCHOOL DUBAI , UAE took the initiative to do something which will impact in a better way in the future . The students of the school with the IMPACT SDG AMBASSADOR Ms.Devika Moshi, took the initiative to teach the students the 17 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS instead of the curriculum related topics. The team started their teaching sessions with the brief introduction about the SDGs then went down with the detailed explanations of the goals and then showed videos related to the goals for the better understanding of the students at the end to make the session more fun filled they also played games and did activities through which the students were able to express their point of view for the SDGs. Also took an oath in order of giving a promise that each one of them will take even small step in contributing to the goals for a better tomorrow and a better world.

HELA’s commitment to promoting Model UN throughout Afghanistan

In October of 2018, Hope for Education and Leadership in Afghanistan (HELA) partnered with the United States Embassy in Afghanistan to develop a grant called “Foster Model UN Trainings and Competitions Throughout Universities in Afghanistan”, which aims to establish Model UN teams throughout the country, hold provincial Model UN conferences, and organize a final conference for successful teams from four provinces of Afghanistan (Kabul, Herat, Mazar and Nangarhar).

Opening Ceremonies at Afghanistan Model United Nations

This grant hit the ground floor running, with thirteen universities and over 500 students becoming involved from the onset. In collaboration with Online Model UN (OMUN), MUN Impact, and the Taipei American School Model United Nations (TASMUN), the HELA Team has provided participating students with training over the span of four months through a standardized curriculum and experienced MUNers throughout the world.

Two months ago, HELA organized Model UN conferences in all four of the aforementioned provinces with over 120 students participating in each. With the exception of Kabul, conference organizers chose 34 students from every province to compete in a championship conference, where they debated geopolitical issues related to peace and strong institutions of governance.

Delegates debating in a moderated caucus.

Currently, HELA is considering organizing a flagship conference for previously involved provinces, to be held on the 28th to 30th of August in Kabul. The organization plans to invite government officials and embassies to the conference’s opening ceremony. With their conference theme set to Sustainable Development Goal 16, peace, justice and strong institutions, HELA has partnered with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Education for Justice (E4J) initiative. Both organizations have worked towards selecting international issues for the flagship conference that are relevant to SDG 16.

The last year has been a long ride for all those involved, so HELA would like to thank its partners for their contributions and support throughout their initiatives!

TASMUN delegates focus on agricultural pollutants and SDG 9 and 12

By Dirpal Shah, Taipei American School

In April 2019, TAS hosted the Taipei American School Model United Nations (TASMUN) conference. Over 600 participants attended from countries all over Asia. Unlike conventional MUN conferences, the themes of this conference were MUN Impact and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). MUN Impact is a global project of Model United Nations that focuses on informing, inspiring, and motivating MUN participants to action in support of the SDGs to solve global issues. The SDGs act as a blueprint – a set of goals created by the United Nations that they hope to achieve by 2030. At this conference, we presented about how our project on the Detection of Agricultural Residues addresses three Goals: Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). In addition to a presentation, we were asked to create a short video describing our project and the goals we addressed. This video was shown to the delegates of the conference and the delegates were asked to vote on the project that was most impactful accordingly to the SDGs.

We were honored to be able to rank the highest in this vote and receive the General Assembly Award of the 2019 TASMUN MUN Impact. We decided to donate our winnings to Tse Xin, an organization dedicated to sustainable agricultural practices that look to prevent misuse of land and that is devoted to countering the harmful effects of carbon dioxide emissions.

A Path to Accessibility: The Story of Raise Your Placard

By Jack Tapay, Director of Curriculums at Raise Your Placard

When Model U.N. delegates leave the confines of their committee rooms, the gravity of the issues they have debated and the importance of the skills they have developed often gets lost on them. Beyond the slip of paper or gavel one may receive at closing ceremonies, conferences allow delegates to learn about geopolitical issues in an engaging and enriching way. In the context of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, Model U.N. becomes an invaluable tool to empower youth and foster values of diplomacy and global citizenship within them.

From the perspective of an active Model U.N. program, it can be easy to lose sight of the socioeconomic barriers inherent in traveling to conferences or preparing for committees. These barriers complicate the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals and tools like Model U.N., as they create atmospheres of exclusivity counterintuitive to the values of the Goals. Low-income communities and disadvantaged groups are rarely given the light of day within the Model U.N. community, with the costs of attending conferences and the esoteric nature of the activity preventing participation. When these factors foster misrepresentation within the Model U.N. community, they not only conflict with the Goals but also act contrary to them.

Raise Your Placard is a volunteer organization that strives to account for the socioeconomic barriers of Model U.N., upending the tide of exclusion within the activity as best it can. Founded by members of the Bronx Science Model United Nations Team, Raise Your Placard operates throughout New York City to help underserved middle schools build their own Model U.N. programs. With years of experience competing at national Model U.N. conferences, the Raise Your Placard Team is prepared to provide quality training and mentorship to ensure that collaborating middle schools create strong programs.

Throughout the next year, Raise Your Placard will continue to conduct outreach throughout New York City. The organization will work hand-in-hand with its partners to engage participating students in Model U.N. through a streamlined curriculum that combines lessons on Model U.N. strategy with relevant geopolitical issues. The Raise Your Placard Team fervently believes that success in Model U.N. relies on a comprehensive understanding of the pressing issues facing other countries, allowing students to reap the benefits of global awareness and develop a passion for international relations. They hope that by the end of the next academic year, Raise Your Placard would have left its partnered middle schools with their own Model U.N. programs and the next generation of diplomats.

Within the first month of its establishment, Raise Your Placard partnered with local middle school M.S. 101 and laid the groundwork for the next few months. Headed by Ms. Hilda Blair and sponsored by Assistant Principal Ms. Leigh Wishney, the M.S. 101 chapter has begun recruiting students for their newly formed Model U.N. team. “Model United Nations provides middle schoolers from diverse and underserved communities the opportunity to learn about the global community of which they are a part, understand other people’s perspectives and challenges, and experience the power of problem solving and diplomacy.” Ms. Blair says. “Access to a program like this takes student learning outside of the classroom and allows students to apply their skills and knowledge to real-world issues as they engage with other student teams in conferences throughout the year.”

When asked about M.S. 101’s partnership with Raise Your Placard, Ms. Wishney commented on the experience of the Raise Your Placard Team. “We are grateful to partner with an organization of motivated and experienced young people to support the launch of Model UN at M.S. 101. I am most excited to have our students engage with and learn from the students from Raise Your Placard so they can share their personal experiences and knowledge.”

Accessibility within the Model U.N. community still has a long ways to go, but the Raise Your Placard Team hopes to aid that path throughout New York City. With its first chapter in-development and a group of devoted organizers on-hand, the future of Raise Your Placard looks bright as it enters the summer season.

For more information about Raise Your Placard, please visit https://www.raiseyourplacard.org!

Where’s Newmo? A Director’s Quest for MUN Impact

 

This year we will be treated to a special, recurring series on our community blog: “Where’s Newmo?” Many of you know John Burroughs MUN Director Andrew Newman, the most prolific taker of selfies in the MUN community. He is also a veteran MUN Press Team Director, MUN aficionado, and one of the founding members of MUN Impact!

This year, Andrew has been blessed with a year long sabbatical, and one of his driving projects will be to travel the world documenting impactful MUN conferences and programs. With a schedule bursting with scheduled stops at incredible conferences, Andrew hopes to visit Egypt and India, South Africa and Beijing, Japan and Ethiopia and many points in between. Andrew will share his insights as he makes this incredible, first of its kind MUN Impact journey. We hope to develop a photo exhibit of his work in 2020.

The next post will be from Andrew Newman himself. Look for the guy in the yellow and white striped shirt and pom hat. Can you identify his first stop?

Where in the world is Newmo?

Model UN students in Cairo strive to make an impact: HIAMUN 2019

By: Alaa Aref and Nour El Shahawy, HIAMUN Press Head and Deputy Head

HIAMUN is an annual Model UN conference that hosts 400 participants from schools all around Egypt. Since our last conference, HIAMUN ‘19, we decided to take a more distinguishable approach, through adopting and fulfilling the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). Working towards these goals, we took actions such as fundraising for our annual community service project, and becoming a more environmentally friendly institution.

This community service initiative has become one of the highlights of our annual conferences. Every year in HIAMUN, there is a cupcake booth where participants can send notes to fellow participants, friends, and delegates along with a cupcake. While this adds to the conference`s spirit, money collected from this booth goes towards raising funds for community service initiatives. This past year, to achieve progress in SDG goal 10, we partnered with an organization supporting the athletic training of the differently-abled.

Alhassan foundation: An organization working towards the training of the differently abled

The organization we partnered with for the project is an organization called Al Hassan Foundation, based in Egypt. The organization has been successful in encouraging athletic participation and excellence among the differently abled. Our team also hosted bake sales prior to the conference during break time, where we were also able to raise funds in support of this organization.

Furthermore, In hopes of furthering our progress in SDG goal 12, and striving towards a more eco-friendly community, we collected used resolution papers, notes, and plastic bottles from our delegates after the conference and gave them to a local recycling company. We were given cash in return, which also contributed to the community service project.

By paying attention to simple issues, and taking small, yet impactful, initiatives we are proud to say that our conference is one that is actively working towards achieving and making progress in fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals. We are very honored to partner with MUN Impact as well as encouraged to make more of an influence.

UNMUN Summit and MUN Impact NYC make its Debut

By Zoe Fisher, MUN Impact Diplomat and Executive Team Member

If you asked me a year ago what model UN was I would most likely answer: “a competition between students representing countries in UN bodies, to debate international relations and devise solutions”. If you asked me today, after attending the Model UN Youth Summit at the UN and Model UN Impact Conference, I would give you a completely different response.

MUNers are often so caught up in the competitive aspect of Model UN and the conferences themselves that we fail to see the true purpose of what we are undertaking. Every time we debate in moderated caucuses and negotiate during unmods we are not just completing a “simulation”. The solutions we create have the potential to change lives for the better. The resolutions that we slave over for three days include programs and initiatives that we, ourselves, have the power to implement in society. This is something I didn’t realize until after my time at the MUN Impact Conference. Model UN Impact is a non-governmental organization that strives to inspire participants in Model United Nations to take action for the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite being founded only eighteen months ago, MUN Impact has spread to six continents, connecting thousands of members of the Model UN community in a web of service, action, and collaboration.

At the United Nations MUN Summit I had the privilege of hearing from speakers such as the Secretary General, but what was far more inspiring and impressive were the countless high school and college students who spoke about the actions they’ve already taken in their own communities. I’ve been exposed to the SDGs throughout my four years of MUN, but I always pushed them aside as un-reachable and idealistic dreams. This outlook, I learned, was what was unreasonable- not the SDGs. Whether it was the group of students who started a tampon drive or the two college girls from India who have facilitated the planting of over 80,000 trees as part of “Project Vruksh”, I realized that an ordinary sixteen year-old girl such as myself has the ability to make an extraordinary impact for the SDGs. As I heard my peers speak on the floor of the UN, my pen tried to keep up with the ideas flooding my mind, scribbling them on my go-to MUN legal pad. When I got back to my hotel  room that night and looked through my notes, I noticed a shocking similarity. The ideas for projects aimed at addressing the SDGs that I had written on my legal pad reminded me of the solutions I’d scribble during moderated caucuses as I prepared to write a Model UN resolution. In fact, my real-life proposals were exactly the same as what I would advocate for during Model UN simulations.

The next day at the MUN Impact Conference, delegates had the opportunity to take the inspiration from the previous day’s summit and use it to create original solutions to persisting crises. I had the privilege of running the “Planning for Impact” workshop as a member of the Executive Board. During this activity, delegates worked to create a project addressing one SDG. The impressive ideas and initiatives that were brought to the floor blew my mind. But what was more eye opening was watching a Gambian boy living in Qatar working side-by-side a Korean girl living in Taiwan to combat the worldwide hunger crisis. At that moment I finally answered the question: “what is Model UN?”

Model UN is cross-cultural collaboration. Model UN is not just simulating the UN’s work, but being inspired by it and using that inspiration to enact tangible change. MUNers have the knowledge, determination, passion, and creativity to prove those who label the SDGs as “un-realistic” wrong. Why throw away all your hard work at the culmination of a conference? Instead of letting old resolutions collect dust in bottom desk drawers I challenge each and every one of you to pick an idea from a Model UN resolution you wrote and start by implementing it in your local community. Whether it’s encouraging your peers to adopt sustainable practices or simply educating your parents on the SDGs every small action counts. The Model UN community is far wider than a vast network of international conferences. It’s a network of change makers and influencers. So I urge you to redefine what Model UN means to you, and bring your resolutions to life one SDG at a time.

For more information visit:

https://munimpact.org/

Or Email me:

zfisher@munimpact.org

Marcha Solidaria supports SDG6 and Thirst Project

Maria Eza & Laura Smith, Bilbao, Spain 

THIRST PROJECT STAND

On Saturday 23rd of March our school held the annual “March Solidaria” which helps raise funds for the Congo. The Mun Impact Club decided that we could also raise awareness of the SDG number 6 (clean water and sanitation) whilst raising money for the Thirst Project. So during the week before the event each one of us had a job to do, for example one had to make the advertising posters, another one the board with all the information and so on.

On the day of the Marcha Solidaria eight of us started up the Thirst Project stand, which consisted in running 75m as fast as possible carrying two bottles of 5L each, full of water. We timed all of the participants so that we could see who had been the fastest. By the end of the day lots of people had participated and we raised a good amount of money because of all of the donations!

American School of Doha’s SDG Squad

I’m Maria Manacheril, one of four MUN directors at the American School of Doha, and I had the privilege of attending the MUN Impact Summit in New York in mid-April along with one of my students, Hannah Kollen.  The entire weekend was so energizing and we couldn’t wait to bring new ideas back to our school.  When we returned to Doha, ASD had just kicked off their Spirit Week, which included dress-up days like Pajama Day and Squad Day.  I thought, “why don’t we have an SDG Squad, where students can represent an SDG of their choice all day?”
I ran the idea past two of our student leaders who are involved in MUN, GirlUP, and EFFECT, and the idea was met with enthusiasm.  Hannah and Brodie, along with our service coordinator, Chi, helped me spread the word.  We sent out a Google form asking students and teachers to sign up for their SDG ahead of time to help minimize color printing.  The participants either wore a white shirt or wore their spring break service trip shirt.  Many of them graciously agreed to be photographed for social media.  I asked everyone to hold on to their SDG tile after the day was over, to display it on their lockers, notebooks, laptops, etc., to help increase visibility and awareness of the global goals.
What I loved was that each person in our squad is playing a role in making sure we reach these goals by 2030.  Some of them are taking environmental action like composting, reducing plastic use, and switching to a plant-based diet.  Others are advocating for human rights, girls’ rights, the right to an education, and more.  And many of them (not just the teachers!) are working towards Goal 4.7: “ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.”  I encouraged each squad member to keep promoting these SDGs, but more importantly, keep taking action.  Our actions don’t have to be grand or expensive.  Small steps can make a huge impact, especially when we are consistent.
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Maria is the leading MUN Impact advocate in Qatar, and will be working to initiate a professional learning discussion around Target 4.7 (global education) and MUN. See our Target 4.7 page for more information.

Book Drive Supports Quality Education

Students at  Colegio Munabe in Bilbao, Spain were inspired to act thanks to the efforts of the MUN Impact club in town. Students from Munabe share the story…..
After attending a talk by the MUN IMPACT team from Ayalde about the sustainable development goals, our English teachers asked the class of 3 ESO A to develop a project to work on one of them.

Even if all the SDGs are extremely important and solving those important issues will undoubtedly have a great impact in the future of our world, we chose to deepen our understanding about the fourth goal: quality education.

We came to realise it was indeed really important for people who aren’t as lucky as we are to have a proper education. That’s why we decided to focus on starting a project to help tackle this issue. After brainstorming several ideas we agreed to organise a book collection project in the school so as to later donate them to NGOs working on this issue.

In order to develop our project, we organised 3 groups: the first one in charge of explaining the project in the different classes, the second group preparing the boxes where the books would be stored and the posters to be placed in different parts of the school, and the last group in charge of   organising the schedules with the headteachers and contacting the NGOs. The only condition we set was that the book should be yours, you couldn’t buy them. The main idea was to reuse them. After all this, we collected more books than we expected, and now they are ready to be distributed amongst their future new owners!