MUN stands for Model United Nations and it is a platform where each person is assigned one country and the person represents the country as a delegate of the country for one particular United Nations body. MUN’s are organized specially for school students to give them a platform to debate and express or develop their communication and research skills. During my 11th grade, I participated in 2 MUN’s, The mega conference, and FSMUN. FSMUN is the event held at our school every year since the last four to five years and this year I decided to participate in it after a great experience at The mega conference. In FSMUN I was in the Disarmament and International Security committee and was assigned Japan country.
LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
I was able to identify one major weakness during the span of the activity. The weakness I identified was lack of good orating skills. Talking in front of many students is now a must know part in today’s world but after this activity, I got to know that I get nervous when I have to speak for even a few minutes even if I have ready speech. I also noticed that my speeches are not clear to the audience and my points are not conveyed properly. I now realize that this weakness has to be overcome by speaking in public more often or with myself facing the mirror and make sure that the speech is clear and the audience can easily understand it.
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
The major challenge faced during this activity was researching skills. Research skills are one of the most necessary parts of living in the 21st century. I am not bad at research skills but I mention it here as a challenge because in MUN’s normal research skills are not helpful because you have to research about an agendum from a different country’s perspective and not your native country’s perspective which makes the task difficult. As time passed and more and more time was invested for research I was able to find few good points on our agendum but still, the points were not sufficient enough to go to any debate competition and hence I went to the MUN underprepared. I did develop research skills but not to a great extent and plan to enhance it through participating in more MUN or debate competition
LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
The commitment was an important factor while researching for the agendum as stated earlier that it was very difficult to find data for the desired topic and the country. Giving up early was not an option because I already had registered for the event and committing to research was a very difficult task. There were many instances while researching that I used to slam my laptop’s screen because of frustration of not able to find information but every new day I started fresh and was able to find bits and pieces of information. Committing here started getting easy when bits and pieces of information were found and I was then keen to search more as the base for research was ready.
LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions
Ethics were taken care during this activity because according to the rules in MUNs data only available on UN and governments sites were acceptable. Ethical actions were taken by only taking data from the prescribed sources and also each data set was cited whenever referred while speaking.
The learner profile covered in this activity were Thinker, Knowledgeable and communicators. Thinkers because in MUNs creative and critical thinking is a must part while searching for possible solutions for the given agendum Thinkers is a must used learner profile in MUNs because the ultimate aim of MUNs is to come to one common creative and critical solution to the given Agendum. Knowledgeable because current knowledge and new knowledge gained is used to debate upon your stand during the MUN. Communicator because MUNs are not limited to one single school. People from many different schools take part in MUNs and we get to know different people during MUNs. Also, it improves your communication skill as these MUNs are full of debating which overall improves your speech delivering skills.
