For me, the highlight of THIMUN - The Hague this year was spending time with the students of John Burroughs School. It made me realize more than ever how much I miss them.
The thirty-three students from JBS served as delegates of the countries of Egypt and Costa Rica, advocates of the International Court of Justice, and journalists on the MUNITY press team. They came well prepared after months of research, resolution writing, and crafting opening speeches. In session they had to navigate challenging situations including, but not limited to, committee Chairs who would not call on them, delegates who demanded being named main submitter of a resolution, prepping witnesses called-on the last minute, and deadlines for the newspaper.
One of greatest accomplishments I witnessed this year was the brilliant work of Zoë Scully '21, who served as a videographer on the press team. I challenged the team of student videographers to come up with an opening ceremony video that had to do with the theme of the conference; securing and advancing democracy. Zoë stepped up to the plate and in two months time absolutely knocked the project out of the park. Zoë followed the model of several successful opening ceremony videos I had seen in Panama and Chennai, but the messaging and layering and craftsmanship in this video was like no other anyone has seen before.
This year the THIMUN Board of Directors made a commitment to move in the direction of a paperless conference. Towards that goal, MUNITY was asked to create a web-based newspaper. After more than thirty years of handing out newspapers every morning as the delegates arrived at the conference, MUNITY made 3500+ paper copies of the pre-conference newspaper available to all participants and then went to work on four online newspapers. Personally it was difficult to let go of this component of simulating the operations of a real newspaper, but in today's world with rising environmental concerns and the student's familiarity with online content, we worked to make this transition from paper to the web an easy one. I applaud the MUNITY press team and the Board for working together through the challenges of making this change. We joked about what exactly a "web-based App" or "WAPP" looks like, but the content in the end was professional, in-depth, and the students rose to the occasion to overcome all the obstacles.
And a special shout out to the four directors/chaperones of the JBS MUN program who brilliantly guided these students through a special experience. The picture below says it all about these four people who spent just about every hour in the conference center walking the halls and being present in the rooms when their students were presenting and having their moment to shine. As surrogate parents they were there just about every step of the way in the growth of their students.
Love this one, Andy. There's no place like home? (even from afar)
Have been enjoying all of your postings & this is my favorite one!🥰