Diplomacy, global issues, international relations, and how the United Nations is run is taught and simulated in the Model UN club, run by juniors Geneva Johnson and Laurel Minor.
“We already knew that Piedmont didn’t really have a Model UN and we thought it seemed like a really cool idea to learn more about other countries and learn more about the UN in general, and how countries work together to make resolutions and solve problems,” junior Geneva Johnson said.
The UN stands for the United Nations, which is an intergovernmental organization that was established in 1945, built to maintain international security and peace, according to the United Nations official website. One of the main goals is to practice friendly relations among nations— the Model UN club simulates this.
“The Model UN club has been around for two years,” said history teacher and club advisor Janine Sohn.
The Model UN club is a branch of a large organization with chapters all over the world, including a lot of highschools with chapters or clubs.
“This club was a good fit for what I teach,” Sohn said. “One of the classes that I teach is world cultural stuff, so we often end up talking about international relations. I teach about the UN and its various functions, not in a whole lot of depth, but still enough to know the basics about these so it seemed to be a good fit.”
At most of the club meetings, members learn more and more about how the UN works and operates and about current international relations and affairs.
“The students are really good about driving the purpose of the club. 90 percent of the time the club is about students coming in at lunch every Thursday, and there’s usually some sort of lesson that has been prepared,” Sohn said.
The club talks about what will be discussed at their next conference, or about certain international issues going on.
“We meet with other people from other schools, and you each get your own country. As your country, you get to make resolutions to solve problems that are affecting the entire world,” junior Laurel Minor said. “You get to come together with other countries to kind of make world peace.”
The Model UN club goes to local conferences and models as delegates for a country. There, they are presented with a certain problem and try to work together with delegates from other countries to solve the problems. Then, they present the resolutions and vote on whether they should pass them or not.
“Usually we have around 20 people who come regularly, sometimes a little less,” Minor said.
The Model UN club meets every Thursday during lunch in room 28, according to the Model UN Instagram account.
“Our goals for the future are that we want to get more participation in going to conferences and stuff, this year we’ve only been to two conferences so we’d like to get more in the future,” Johnson said.
The Model UN club had their first conference at Encinal High School, and two awards were given to Piedmont’s delegations— Iran for best delegate, which was represented by Johnson and Minor, and Philippines for commended delegate, which was represented by juniors Maddox Ma and Marius Arno.
“[The Model UN Instagram account] has definitely helped us reach out to other clubs across the bay area and help us find more conferences to go to,” Minor said.
The Model UN club is still growing and inviting to new members who would like to join. No prior experience is needed, according to the Model UN Instagram account.
“As soon as our members get comfortable with going to conferences with us, they will hopefully go by themselves, and you can win a lot of awards, and you can have a lot of fun and meet a lot of new people,” Minor said.
