Amy Iwanaga
Staff Writer
Model United Nations Hosted the Perfect Conference
On the weekend of January 18th and 19th, Mission Viejo High School hosted their 37th Model United Nations (MUN) Conference in a professional and well planned manner. The Mission MUN class has been working tirelessly for the past five months to prepare for the event that they got to host.
At the event one could witness delegates from ages 12 to 18 debate on topics such as the Zika Virus, illegal drug trade, and coral reef destruction. The younger and less experienced delegates participated in Novice committees on Saturday, and the Advanced committees took place both days.
The 17 different schools that came to the event all had nothing but praise for the Mission students and the overall experience from the conference.
While observing a spectrum of different types of committees there was an overall air of professionalism from the working students. The Mission Viejo members all knew how to perform their jobs even when in unexpected situations and under large amounts of stress.
The senior based secretariat board chose the topic that will be discussedfor each committee, and the head chairs wrote the topic synopsis that the delegates worked off of. Many of the subjects that were picked are very relevant to what is happening in the world today which helped the students be passionate and well informed in their arguments. The master mind of the conference however was Mrs. Kimberly Gerwatosky, or as the students refer to her as Mrs. G, the MUN advisor at Mission Viejo. When I got a chance to speak with her, she couldn’t help but praise her secretariats, or student leaders, for all of the hard work they put into preparing the conference. The secretariats were behind everything from the sponsored lunch, to the name tags to the door labels. The recognition for the success of this conference mostly goes to the secretariats and how well they work together as an organizational unit.
The Mission Viejo MUN program focuses on, in Mrs. G’s words, “diplomacy, collaboration, working with others, because once you find common ground you’re going to be more able to work with others.” She greatly enjoys hosting because she gets to watch her students learn to be respetful when interracting with visiting students and shows them how to have integrity when it comes to their responsibilities.
Mrs. G, as she puts it, “run(s) around to make sure that any fires are put out.” She was overjoyed to hear that four school board members that observed the conference all had nothing but positive feedback for the hosting class. Mrs. G also couldn’t help but mention their sponsoring charity.
The sponsoring charity was the Obey Foundation. This operation was created by Abishai Ben Reuben, Kojo Bey, and Adrese Roundtree, and is a non-profit organization that has been helping children in Sub-Saharan Africa by building schools and recreational centers since 1998. Because of this organization, so many doors are being opened for these children that without the Obey Foundation would not have been.
