MUNs are an extremely good platform for students to socialise and improve their personal engagement skills. Fountainhead School Model United Nations ( FSMUN )is an annual event that takes place in our school where students from across the state come as delegates of different countries in different committees of the United Nations and represent their nation in order to express their opinions on the given agendas.

I was given the title of Under-Secretary-General for Communications & Public Relations:, and therefore the burdens of multiple responsibilities came upon me. Responsibility to raise the visibility of the conference by managing all delegate affairs and being in charge of social media. Also has to focus on promoting the conference and searching for delegates across the city and state and handling all delegate registrations and queries before the conference.

Throughout the course of this event, I accomplished LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5, LO6

I never faced challenges when it came to working with others and working on time with my work, throughout the event whatever work that was assigned to me, I made sure that I completed it on time and to the best of my abilities, although the issues that I had faced was with the organization of the work that I did, which always pulled down the standard and quality of the work that I did, I had potential to do better but that was one weakness that would hamper my quality of work.

I had to take care of all delegate affairs which was very demanding because I had to call up delegates to get the payment and then their queries on the last day and on the day of event. I had to stay late to answer questions of delegates over call and mail, this was quite challenging because most of the delegates were first timers because of which I had to make them understand everything from scratch, for example what is United Nations, the dress code and how to behave in a MUN. Knowing most of the delegates being first timers we organised a session for first timers where we make them understand everyone in school, again here there was a time constraint and a lot of knowledge to be delivered which made it difficult.

My first task was to get delegates for FSMUN, for which I visited almost 10 schools to make announcements and almost 20 tuition classes giving pamphlets to students. Some tuition classes gave a very promising response but others did not. We even made announcements in all classes in fountainhead itself and we got nice responses because most of them were familiar with MUN and were interested in these kinds of events. All members of the core committee took the effort to reach out to all our friends and asking them personally to be a part of the event and ask them to ask their friends to be a part of the event. When I was making announcements I got to know there was another MUN in our competition which was also taking place in Surat so we gave it a fight and achieved 120 delegates from around schools in Surat. I managed to get a lot of delegates because I am good at convincing people and doing groundwork.

I was also incharge of the social media which was challenging for me because I have never been on social media that much so I had to take assistance from my friends which helped me a lot. The graphics team was under me so I had to guide them and explain to them exactly what we need for the event and then follow up with them to get it done. For social media we had a website, instagram page, snapchat, facebook to reach out to people and send all information. 

Today globally MUNs have evolved but in India specifically Surat students do not understand the main crux of these events. Through this MUN me and my team tried to influence some students and hope to bring a change in the MUN industry which is slowing becoming about money, our goal was to make the students understand the greater good of this event and display the significance of it in their day to day life.

The core committee consisted of four members including me who were in control of the entire event and responsible for its workings, I had to make sure that I kept any and every personal grudge aside in order to work with maximum efficiency for the event, although the core committee consisted of close friends of mine so I did not find any issues in working with them or putting my ideas across. Moreover, working in a collaboration helps to get multiple perspectives on an issue and helps us to solve it much quicker and much more efficiently.

 

Overall during the course of this four-month journey, I had experiences that are worth remembering for the longest time and I hope that I am privileged to work in a similar event again and be able to excel in this field further.