By Ayomide Ajakaiye and Sara Cao
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As the MUN Impact Global Choir’s rendition of High Hopes by Panic! At the Disco commences, viewers are enthusiastically greeted by eleven students from all over the world singing their hearts out. In the video, a symphony of optimistic voices fills the air as they twirl together into an upbeat melody filled with promise while images of people protesting for the Black Lives Matter movement and volunteers picking up empty plastic bottles are displayed. After the song ends, the voices and images resonate with viewers as an encouraging message of “High Hopes” for the future is broadcasted.
The global choir, composed of eleven students -Gladys, Hugh, Canran, Lois, Nicole, William, Jana, Ayomide, Nikharika, and Gracia- was originally a project with the goal of bringing positivity into a year characterized by bleakness and hopelessness. With hours of preparation from the students and their mentors, Andrew Newman and Taylor Pietz, on October 23rd, 2020, these eleven students debuted as MUN Impact’s premier Global Choir. Representing 10/11 countries from around the world, the choir successfully achieved its overall goal of belting out the messages of unity, positivity, and confidence into the MUN Impact Global Summit 2.0.
The origins of the MUN Impact Global Choir stem from Andrew Newman, a MUN director from John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri, who came up with the idea of a virtual MUN Impact choir after seeing his first virtual choir while sheltering in place because of COVID-19. Newman recalls being blown away by its beauty, and even though he “understood immediately how challenging it must be to coordinate,” he thought that “the music was so inspirational and hopeful and [he] immediately thought of the work MUN Impact was doing and what a powerful message it would be for students to perform in their own virtual choir.” He knew that he wanted to cover the song, High Hopes, by Panic! At the Disco because he thought that “the words fit into the mission at MUN Impact; we have high hopes for the future of our planet and we have a vision to solve global issues and we are ALWAYS shooting for the stars with all of our ideas and programs that we create.”
With this idea of a virtual choir and the song High Hopes in mind, Newman took to the MUN Impact Slack App channel and put out a call for students to join the choir if they enjoyed singing or had any past music experience. Many students replied, and Newman and Pietz discovered that they had a wide range of talents before them, as Newman comments that “the range of talent and the fact that the choir comes from all over the world is what makes it so special.”
Having made a successful virtual choir in her own school, John Burroughs, Taylor Pietz took this experience with her into the Global Choir when Newman asked for her help. Pietz, who had not been involved with MUN before joining this project, found herself “impressed with [the choir participants’] level of professionalism and dedication” towards the program. Being a fully virtual choir composed of students from different countries provided some new challenges for Pietz as she “really had to stop and make sure that what I [Pietz] was teaching made sense” to all of the participants. Her lack of experience did not prevent her from putting her best effort into the choir, and ultimately seeing students of a variety of different nationalities, all with huge passions for MUN, was very inspiring for her.
Given her previous experience singing at her church choir, Gladys Sophia, a choir participant from India was thrilled to join Newman and Pietz’s new enterprise. In no short time, the melody of High Hopes could be heard blaring from her TV as Sophia, with help from her older sister, Gracia, spent hours running through the song “because we wanted to get each and every lyric clear…So we had to practice it and keep on practicing.”
Sophia’s amazing work ethic and devotion to the choir can, in some respects, be accredited to the phenomenal training she had received as a MUN@HOME delegate. She recalls participating in some of their first sessions, where she was asked to think critically about matters such as gender equality. These discussions, starting in MUN@HOME debates slowly translated into actual action with the choir. “We’re basically showcasing that we [the youth] in the future can make the world a better place. And that song also showcases that.” She also felt the diversity of the choir helped contribute to this message. Before joining MUN Impact, she “never knew anybody who was diverse.” That being so, she realized that for her, this was more than singing, but an opportunity to learn and experience different cultures while making an impact.
Similar to Gladys, William Weston, a choir member and a MUN Impact European diplomat from England, believed that diversity was a major strength of the choir. In his city of Manchester, William enjoys friendships with students from diverse backgrounds, however, he feels like it is completely different “to be in contact and working with people from all around the world.” For William, this diversity, paired with the youthful exuberance of the members, “left everyone who watched [the Global Choir’s video] with some inspiration to go out there and…try to make the world a better place.”
Though not every viewer of the Global Choir’s debut video speaks English, the song’s overall message was still clearly felt by the MUN Impact community as many still resonated with the optimism of the choir. Annemarie Hou, the Acting Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Partnerships and the Senior Communications Adviser in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General at United Nations, felt impacted by the voices of the choir as she stated: “Wow, that music is so inspiring and gives me very high hopes. One of my bosses, the deputy secretary general, often says to us: we need a symphony where everyone sings together otherwise we risk a cacophony. And I can tell you definitely that this is a symphony, which is what Model UN is really about- coming together to think about the wonderful mission of the UN.”
The positive impact of the video was not only felt by Hou, but also by the overall MUN community and Andrew Newman recalled that participants of the choir felt “proud to be in the virtual choir and are asking when the next song will be chosen and they can sing again.” He also observed that “many new MUN Impact participants reached out and expressed their joy in knowing there is a choir and how they would love to join. We have also heard accolades from the UN and MUN community who are so impressed with the choir and the choice of music. “What a perfect song for you all to sing”, is what we have heard the most.”
The overall impact and message of the choir and the song, High Hopes, ties into MUN’s mission of the voice of youth expressing their views on global issues, since the choir is, according to Newman, “a new platform from which to speak/sing out to share our message.” It weaves together with MUN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as Newman phrases that “…the coming together of this group to form the choir, sharing a passion for music, is all about SDG 4 because we are educating each other through music. SDG 3 as well because our music makes people smile and be happy and we all know those feelings of joy and happiness make us healthier….like how laughter is good for you, music can be as well.” Thus, the MUN Global Choir truly highlights the core values of MUN and unleashes a language of hopefulness we all are in need of in 2020.
You can watch the performance here on YouTube.