Redwood’s Model United Nations (Model UN) club successfully hosted their annual conference on Oct. 23, which serves as a simulation to prepare students for the various colleges conferences they will be attending later this year.
More than 60 Model UN students from Redwood, Branson, Marin Academy and Tam attended the rigorous seven hour conference, which addressed controversial world issues such as women’s rights, air pollution and the Syrian refugee crisis.
The Model UN Club began extensive preparation for the conference last school year. The club received funding from ASB, raised money through bake sales and was given donations in order to allow them to hold a successful event.
“For our conference to happen, it requires a lot of student involvement,” said senior and Vice President of Model UN, Lilly Kane-Dacri. “We have three chairs for each committee, and all of our chairs are required to write a topic background which is supposed to help students through the process.”
The purpose of the conference is to prepare students for upcoming conferences at Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
“Pretty much it’s a practice conference for the club,” said senior and Secretary General, Ben Gold. “We have a lot of freshman this year so we need a lot of practice for the conferences at Stanford, Cal and Davis.”
Organizing such a large event is extremely difficult, not only because of the numerous tasks that need to get done, but also due to the fact that if only a few people attend the conference then the club could lose money, according to Kane-Dacri.
“The concern is not having enough students to cover the cost of holding a conference,” Kane-Dacri said. “If we don’t raise enough money at the conference this October, we’re going to have to supplement through other events in order to help subsidize other conferences for students.”
A big concern prior to the conference was not getting enough students to attend the conference; however, there were 65 students in total, which is the number the club had hoped to receive.
“In bigger conferences that I’ve been to, there have been power delegates that drown out other people,” Gold said. “But, this time there was the perfect number of people, so everyone’s voice was heard.”
Compared to other clubs at Redwood, Model UN requires an exceptional amount of student commitment and devotion to studying world issues, according to junior Josh Dabora, a member of Model UN.
“The initiative a lot of people took to have meaningful conversations and staying focus on topics was the best part of the conference,” Dabora said. “Especially considering it was such a long conference on a weekend.”
The conference is not only a place to share ideas, but also an opportunity to meet students from other schools who share the common interest of discussing world issues, according to Gold.
“It gives them a chance to meet kids from local schools like Tam, Branson and Drake that will go to other conferences,” Gold said. “I am still friends with students that I met at our conference during my freshman year.”
Following the seven hour conference, there was a closing ceremony in which awards were given out to particular students who performed best during the event.
“The conference gets better and better every year,” said Model UN advisor Lisa Kemp. “It makes a big difference having full committees in order to discuss the various topics.”
