Auckland Model UN
By Lara Walker.
My name is Lara Walker, and I am a joint U.S and NZ Citizen who is currently in Year 10 at ACG Strathallan in Karaka, Auckland.
I have a very strong interest in foreign affairs/international relations, politics and history. Because of this, I applied for the two-day Auckland Model UN (AMUN 2021). My application was accepted and I was assigned the USA despite it being my first time at a Model UN event and me only being a year 10 student, this was a huge honor.
I was a little nervous at first, but everyone one was really nice, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. On the first day, a group of around 25 people discussed the question of Foreign intervention as if we were in an actual UN meeting. I was able to act on behalf of the US and steer the course of the outcome. After that, we had an interactive workshop where we split into two groups (North and South Korea) and tried to unify “our” countries. This was done without direct contact with the other country and with extremely difficult barriers to overcome, a very challenging and rewarding exercise.
Day two, we discussed the topic of global Food Security and Changing Ecosystems where again I gave a voice on behalf of the USA. before Our plenary was in the afternoon, which was a larger version of the group discussion.
There were around 250 present per plenary. Overall, it was a little nerve-racking to stand up and speak in front of that many people as if I was representing the USA, but I learned lots of new things and made a ton of new and interesting friends from all over the world, which was really fun.
I enjoyed it so much that I applied for the National NZ Model UN which takes place down in Wellington over 4 days, I hope to represent the USA once again. I would highly recommend it to anyone even if they didn’t have very much confidence in public speaking as a platform to understand the work of the UN.
Find out more about UN Youth at: unyouth.org.nz/regions.
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