The Model UN Club traveled to Washington DC for the NAIMUN (National American Invitational Model United Nations) conference meeting on Thursday, February 15th.
Senior Haneef Ogundipe has been in Model UN since sophomore year and is returning his senior year to make the most of it.
“[NAIMUN] takes a lot of people from across the country, along with others across the world, and brings everyone to this conference to speak about their topics and we just try and have an enjoyable time. The main reason I’m doing it this year is for myself, just because I want to make sure I do all I can my senior year, to fill up all the time I can while still having a lot of time with my friends,” Ogundipe said.
Sophomore D’Shon Green joined Model UN for the first time this year as a sophomore.
“Model UN to me is a kind of role-playing in a way of different countries and committees of the National United Nations. The recent research I’ve done was for Nigeria, it’s my recent committee. The committee I’m in is about arms and weapons. So I got to research the weapons situation going on in Nigeria, and I’ve got to come up with a way that the country could hypothetically solve it,” Green said.
Junior Addison Mason joined Model UN because of its similarity to debate and public speaking. Mason is also interested in modeling the UN as she hopes to in the future.
“The best thing about Model UN is meeting the people. There are people from all over the country and all over the states. I also think it’s fun just going to lunch with people that you don’t know and fun hearing their experiences. Model UN mixes with schoolwork well, because you have to learn how to research and write papers in MLA, and APA format. And once you reach junior and senior year that becomes very helpful,” Mason said.
Mason recommends that people should try joining Model UN for at least one of their high school years.
“I would try Model UN at least once. It’s a combination of HHS and EMHS students and it can help you. Model UN helps with presenting and not being nervous when presenting stuff in class or public speaking, so it can also help develop those skills. You can just try it out and kind of see if you want to do it or not, and a lot of the kids in Model UN enjoy it,” Mason said.
