Model United Nations (MUN) is an academic simulation of the United Nations that aims to educate participants about current events, topics in international relations, diplomacy and the United Nations agenda. The participants role-play as representing a country in a simulated session of an (committee) of the United Nations, such as the Security Council or the General Assembly. Participants research a country, take on roles as diplomats, investigate international issues, debate, deliberate, consult and then develop solutions to world problems. In general, the participants that the executive panel considers to be most contributing are given awards, such as ‘Best Delegate award’.

Emersyn has been preparing for Model United Nations (MUN) for the past couple months. She was assigned a country – United Kingdom. Her topic of debate is organ trafficking. She left on Thursday morning excited to participate in Dulwich International MUN Conference in Beijing. As always for Emersyn, none of her friends had joined MUN. She is fine going without a “buddy” and has discovered it opens the door for new friendships. From the repots of her excited tales, that was the case in Beijing as she came home with new friends, mostly 8th graders. They spent late nights hanging together at the hotel working on their resolutions. I had sent Emersyn with cookies to share so she was not “allowed” in the room without her cookies!

The group she was working did not get their resolution passed. Emersyn did come home with an award. She was given the award of “Most Diplomatic Delegate on the Economic and Social Council”. Only three awards were handed out for the entire MUN delegates so she was all smiles showing us her achievement.

Emersyn wore her sweatshirt from MUN on Friday. She is very proud of her sweatshirt because she earned it!