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.
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.