By Vedant Kulkarni
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If you wish to make your own MUN Club as a self-sustaining structure, maintaining longevity, then this amazing workshop by Jamie Nunnikhoven (Secretary-General for MUNI Global) and María Fernández elucidated crystal clear ways and insights on how to do so successfully.
Firstly describing the primary reason for creating a MUN Impact (MUNI) club, they highlighted the need to make a change and difference to society and finding out YOUR reason to do so. They explicitly asserted that it is via MUNI clubs where you can promote your niche of SDGs among youth.
Coming directly to the point, the requirements for establishing or starting a MUN Impact club were expounded as:
1) Hosting a MUNI workshop to educate others on MUNI resources
2) Running SDG action campaigns
3) Sharing your action story on the MUNI blog.
THE most important key to success is an effective TEAM to work with, and to keep them engaged, you need to involve thinking and doing, both aspects simultaneously, with a focus on small and wide projects with continuity and effective communication.
The second component for running it steadily is persistence, where you need to run several activities weekly or monthly to keep your team and audience engaged with you.
The presenters constructively expounded upon various activities and experiences that they conducted in their schools and clubs like various awareness-raising competitions and SDG campaigns, donations to charities, beach, and river clean-ups and inspired the audience with their upcoming projects of Clean up School campaigns- all for dual purpose – the betterment of society and advancement of MUN clubs.
All the examples were suitably described with guidance with respect to individual situations.
Presenters also brought forth solutions for the progression of the club in this pandemic situation, such as:
1) Promoting MUN@Home or its linguistic versions (Spanish, Arabic and French),
2) Online forums and events
3) Debates presentations for awareness, donation campaigns, individual activities, and so on…
I, as a press team member, was lucky enough to ask questions to the presenters regarding the content, and they answered my questions brilliantly:
Q. How do we start our activities for a MUN Impact club without high budgets :
A: Start with small goals, it does not require much money, but the key components are more people and more time. You can try out fundraising, or you can expect some funds from your school.
Q. What are the key factors for running the MUNI club online?
A: The key factors are: communication, regular meetings with people throughout the year, and continuity.
Q. How can we convince the School administrator to start the MUNI club at school?
A: Help the school sell their products: have them advertise themselves and explain how this club will advertise and publicize and benefit the school. With this, your school would be ready to invest in your club.
The presenters implored all the participants who had their own clubs to partner with MUN impact for exponential growth and unprecedented benefits in developing their goals.
So why wait? Partner with MUNI with this link: https://munimpact.org/get-involved/partner-clubs/
The full recorded session of this workshop can be accessed here.