The award-winning Model UN Club at National Model United Nations 2024

Note: Contributor Sophia Jabagat is a member of the MacEwan Model United Nations club. 

On March 20, members of MacEwan’s Model United Nations Club travelled to New York to represent the Netherlands at the prestigious National Model United Nations conference (NMUN).

From March 24 to March 30, the delegation from MacEwan’s Model UN Club represented the Netherlands at NMUN, covering nine different committees such as the IAEA, UNEA, UNHCR, GA 1 and many others. 

Head delegate and secretary-general (and SAMU student’s councillor) Nathan Poon shared his experience leading and participating in the MacEwan team.

“As head delegate, what I would be doing is planning the trip from top to bottom. We booked flights earlier this year, and contacted the Dutch mission so that during the trip, we were able to visit the Netherlands mission in New York, educating MacEwan students on Netherlands foreign policy.”

Chaldeans Mensah, the faculty advisor for MacEwan’s Model United Nations club, has supported the club for over a decade and held the president position for the NMUN. Under his leadership, MacEwan’s Model UN club has won various awards, such as the 2023 New World Award, Distinguished Delegation Award, and Position Paper Awards from recent conferences. 

Mensah states, ‘I think we, at the MacEwan Model UN Club, have a rigorous training method. It is a peer-to-peer training method that builds into a framework of a governance structure where students are leading other students with bylaws. Expectations are very high.’

He emphasizes the importance of participating in Model UN conferences.

“The Model UN process is an experiential training of our students in the formalisms of the UN. But above the formalisms, it’s about training them with important skills they may need throughout their careers.Public speaking, research, and conflict resolution are some skills that the students take away from participating,” he says. 

“But what is important is going to the UN itself and sitting where world leaders have sat. Putting themselves in the position of decision-makers to tackle some of our challenging global problems. This is empowerment and a learning experience that will be with them for a long time.”

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Photo by Christian Galera