MUN committee: Pre-New York City trip.

As La Salle’s MUN committee are making their final preparations before heading to New York for the MUN conference, I decided to catch up with a few of the delegates to find out how they were feeling. Interviewee’s: Anna Marta, Ivan Curti, & Hala Cherradi.   Luke: So how are you feeling about making the final preparations before you head to New York? Excited? Anxious? Do you think you are prepared for the trip? Ivan: I feel more prepared now than I did two weeks ago. The last few weeks we have been working with a higher intensity as the deadline has approached, and now I’m starting to feel more prepared for the trip. I’m sure once we get there everything will fall into place nicely. Anna: I feel like other schools and universities in the US have much more time for preparations than we do here, and many of the students that partake in this course in American universities' are usually majoring in politics so they have a much greater knowledge and insight about what is actually going on in their countries. Where as we are business students and this is quite different from anything we have studied before. Hala: I was part of the MUN committee that went to New York last year, so I have been before and I know what it is going to be like once we get there, so yes I am excited to go again.   Luke: How were you able to raise some of the money for the trip, and do you think you raised enough? Anna: Well we organized a couple of dinners and parties for the students, and one day we also sold donuts and juice on the campus to help raise additional funds. We now have a total of $475, which we can use for transportation once we arrive in New York.   Luke: How have you found the project so far and what have you learnt? Anna: Well we have been able to practice our public speaking skills a lot, which is always helpful, and once we are at the conference we have to deliver a speech in front of a few hundred people, so it is important to be confident and deliver our presentation well. Hala: It was also good to organize the fundraising and the trip itself, and we also have to create a film when we get back to Barcelona. But the most important thing is that we are able to deliver our speech well once we get there, and it must be powerful, clear, and persuasive. We also have to work very long hours once we are in New York, some days it’s almost 15 hours.   Luke: And how have you found working on the Federated States of Micronesia? What have you learnt about the country?  Anna: Difficult to find information. We are supposed to know everything about the country but it has been very hard to find relevant information in English. I am focusing more on the environmental side of things, as they are currently being deeply affected by climate change. If sea levels continue to rise in the coming years, they could loose up to 50% of their land, as most of the islands are only one meter above the current sea level. But the country itself is very confusing because it is made up of 607 small islands that are split into four separate regions, and the cultural and social diversity in each region makes it very difficult. There are only 106,000 people living on the islands, so they are very small and very isolated. Hala: Its not very transparent. Last year we did Myanmar, which was interesting because of the critical human rights situation that was ongoing at the time, but it was also hard to find information as well. Ivan: Some of the main issues we are looking at on the islands are the huge emigration they are currently experiencing. They have an agreement with the US, which allows the free movement of people, which means many islanders have left and moved to the US. They have a very strange relationship with the US, and they are the only nation to have voted exactly the same as the US on every single vote that has been made in the history of the United Nations. They have had an agreement with the US since the 70s’, and they heavily rely on the US for the financing of their economy. The US is supposedly going to give Micronesia $2.2 billion over the next 20 years. Other than that there, their internal economic input consists of their small fishing and agricultural industries. The truth is, without the support of the US they would be a very basic and backward country.     Luke: So can you give me a summary of your itinerary when for once you arrive in New York? Hala: We arrive on Friday the 11^th of April, and the next day we go straight to the Micronesian embassy in New York. Then we have a day off on the Sunday, before the conference starts on Monday the 14^th, and finishes on Friday the 18^th. During the conference we meet all the delegates from other countries depending our area of expertise, we then discuss issues, negotiate, make proposals and resolutions through formal and informal sessions, before delivering our final speech’s in front of a panel. The work is quite intense as the hours are very long. Then we have our final weekend free where we can do our own thing, see some sights, and experience New York.