The most wonderful conference of them all
In September 2001, MUN Director and History teacher Hans Prins decided to try and set up a United Nations simulation at the Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden.
The school had already participated in many MUNs, and various other debating and internationalisation conferences. He contacted the then 5th grade student Thom Gunn, and together they formed a staff of 3rd and 4th grade students by the beginning of January 2002. They also convinced the school to support the idea, and Leiden University to be sponsor of knowledge.
The LEMUN Executive Staff decided that LEMUN would strive to reach a few goals. Mainly, LEMUN wanted to reach out to schools that weren't traditionally interested in MUN and get them 'in on the fun'. Besides that, it would strive to boost educational level of MUN by entertaining more guest speakers and emphasising the importance of research to the new delegates.
By October 2002 it had over 200 delegates. Some of them had never done MUN before, so its staff organised a MUN workshop in Leiden. Attended by almost a hundred people from all over the country, this was considered a great success. A little over a month later, the actual conference started. Over 200 delegates in 5 forums, two Student Officers in each forum, a guestspeaker from Leiden University in each forum... Everything went exactly as planned.
We couldn't have hoped for a more succesful conference. It's up to the future Secretaries General to try and exceed LEMUN 2002. I sincerely hope they do.
- Category:
- Non-governmental organization (ngo)