Covenant College

In March 2005, the United Nations announced the Decade of Education for Sustainable

Development. This initiative aims to promote education and training, and recognise their fundamental role as components of working towards sustainable development goals.

The Model UN Conference is a unique, constructive and interactive professional development tool that enables students to engage in global issues and the work of the United Nations. By taking part in a Model UN, students not only learn about UN bodies and UN member states, but also about the importance of dialogue, diplomacy, negotiation, and building consensus. These skills are fundamental to the development of global citizens and future leaders. Model UN Conferences are an excellent exercise in role-playing, where students are allocated a country and asked to walk in the shoes of that country’s Ambassador.

 This year, Congratulations go to Terence Bell, Emily Mikelsons, Devin Pollitt and Ezra Warren for representing Christ and Covenant College well by winning the “BEST DELEGATION” at the mock UN conference held in the Geelong Town Hall on  17th  October 2008! Emily Mikelsons and Ezra Warren also received honorary mentions as the best speakers. Our delegation competed against 14 other top schools in the Geelong region to come out as winners. Recognition  must also go to the rest of the year 10 International Studies class for being excellent research assistants to the delegates as over 5 weeks they diligently prepared for the conference.

 In attendance were representatives of the United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA), Senior lecturers from Deakin University’s Arts faculty and Local and Federal members of Parliament. It was good to accompany our students and watch them engage in the skills of diplomacy, dialogue and negotiation to pass amendments to a resolution that called for a widening of the definition of ‘Refugees’ to include Environmental Refugees. Although our delegation representing Ethiopia could not get their particular amendment passed, which reflected reality in the International System as they had to contend with more powerful countries, they handled themselves with aplomb and of the highest academic standard. This was noted by one of the UNAA representatives who said that our students showed a wide and comprehensive grasp of the strategic issues being discussed and raised relevant points in their speech and during question times. Well done!

Here is what one of our delegates has to say:

One day in an International Studies class, Mr Nair sat down with a letter in his hand. From that day, the class started preparing for the model UN Conference that was to take place.

The two weeks just before the conference were the most stressful and busy. We had research to do and speeches to write. I stayed up way too late reading useful books and articles and preparing my speech. In hindsight, all the stress was completely unnecessary. But I felt prepared on the day, so maybe some of the stress was worth it.

On the actual day I was extremely nervous about making my speech. But listening to one of the Labor MP’s speak reassured me as I realised that I couldn’t possibly be more boring than he was!

When the time arose to go and make pacts with other countries; Devin, Terence, Ezra and I played out the strategy that we had devised earlier that week. Being the only girl there from Covenant, my part in the plan was to go and speak to the countries that were represented by girls’ schools. So off I went to make some friends and form some alliances. Amazingly enough, all of the other girls (from the smaller and poorer countries) must have had roughly the same idea as we all ended up congregated in this little huddle in the corner. We all agreed that it was time that the third world countries had equal rights with the larger, wealthier nations. Together we decided to not let ourselves be bullied by the richer nations and to make changes for the better, for the whole world. The scheming of our female minds must have paid off, because ultimately the decisions made were extremely beneficial to all of the countries involved in the conference.

Just before I made my speech I was frantically trying to shorten it so that it would fit into the two-minute time span that I was allocated. As I was crossing out lots of valuable parts of my speech, the presenter rose and said, to my utmost dismay, that our speeches could go for two or three minutes, but they wouldn’t stop us until we reached five minutes. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to either cry or re-lengthen my speech, so I stood and made my way to the podium.

 I don’t think that my speech went too badly. I was very glad of the podium  blocking the view of my shaking knees from the audience. I can’t actually recall much of what I said as I was so very nervous, but it must have gone all right because most of the other countries agreed with what I said. A funny thing happened that day as all of the students became extremely patriotic towards the countries that they were representing and started berating Australia. It was a very interesting exercise to watch.

Overall, I absolutely loved it. After my poor nerves recovered, the whole day was an absolute ball! An added bonus to the end of a fantastic day was that Covenant College was announced the best delegation!

Emily Mikelsons