Model U.N. hosts their own conference – Mentor MUN VI!

On NEOEA Day, October  14th, many students will be at home relaxing, sitting back, and enjoying their day off. But not Mentor’s Model UN team. This October 14th, Mentor’s Model UN team is hosting their own conference at Mentor High School. This conference will be two days long (October 14th-15th) and will have schools from all across Northeast Ohio!

At this conference, delegates (people participating) will be a part of one of eight countries’ cabinets. The eight countries are China, Russia, North Korea, Turkey, the USA, the UK, France, and Taiwan. As you might be able to see from the countries listed, this year’s conference is centered around countries that have strong democracies, and those that don’t really do. The official theme is “Blacksliding Democracies, Rising Autocracies”.

The prior year’s Model UN team was hard at work during the last few months of the school year creating this conference. Model UN has not been able to host an -in-person conference since Covid-19, so making this conference a reality was a big hope for this year. Thankfully, they were able to make it happen with a lot of work.

During the planning, the members had to alter their prior plans from a failed attempt to gather in 2021 and basically start from scratch. The Model UN team had to construct a skeleton for the conference and kept on adding to the skeleton. With the theme of in place they created countries, roles, and scripts to fit their theme.

Mentor Model UN’s Executive Director of Mentor MUN VI, Tatyana Sowerby, says, “I did very comprehensive preparation for this conference. I learned about world issues such as Scotland’s craving for independence and Finland’s decision to join NATO to develop crises for the conference.”

Crises that the cabinets (countries) face will be scattered throughout the conference. These crises all vary from each other and will take a lot of collaboration to overcome. Saying that some of these crises are a bit surprising is certainly an understatement. The delegates participating in the conference will definitely have to be on their feet while solving these crises.

The conference will have eight countries, where delegates (students) will be put into assigned roles. The roles given to these delegates will be high-ranking officials in the country they serve. For example, the country that I’m chairing (in charge of), is China. In China, one of the roles is the Minister of National Defense, Wei Fenghe. When a delegate is given this role, they will also be given powers that have also been made by the Model UN team. Some of these roles might consist of being able to do nuclear weapons testing, doing budget cuts, etc. At the conference, delegates will be tasked with playing their roles and being able to act as their person throughout the crises thrown at them.

Now that you know how this conference works, you yourself, a fellow Mentor student, might want to join in on the fun of deciding whether or not to launch nukes in China. This year, Mentor MUN VI is opening its doors to Mentor students! What is special about this is that you don’t even have to be in Model UN to participate, you can just be a random student who is interested! To sign up for the conference, click this link. The conference will be open to Mentor student submissions from the release of this article to October 12th.

Mentor High School’s Mentor MUN VI will definitely be worth all the delegates time and effort! Any Mentor student, with any level of experience, can join in on the fun by just easily signing up. Everyone in the Mentor Model UN team is extremely excited to host this conference and be apart of creating “Blacksliding Democracies, Raising Autocracies,” a reality.