UNASMUN

The UN ECOSOC Youth Forum: Full Of Sound And Fury

My first visit to the United Nations (UN) headquarters was in 2007, when we visited as tourists after the Harvard Model UN conference in Boston. A decade later – after many more simulation conferences and years with the UN Association of Singapore (UNAS) – I went back with a little more excitement, as part of a Singaporean delegation with the National Youth Council. Across the two days we participated in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum, which was organised around the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the role of youth in poverty alleviation and the promotion of prosperity, bringing together policymakers and youth leaders from around the world. The potential for action, in this vein, was high.

But the excitement and expectations, unfortunately, did not meet with reality at the UN. “Full of sound and fury; signifying nothing”. Criticisms of the UN – gathered through model UN, academic research, and every-day commentaries – have centred on its characterisation as a talk-shop, and I felt the same at the ECOSOC Youth Forum. Continue reading →

UNASMUN: Turning A New Page

October 10, 2010: The first mention of the United Nations Association of Singapore Model United Nations Preparatory Conference (UNASMUN) in my inbox, when I described it as an introductory endeavour to “gather new [teachers] and students … [to help] expose them to the Model UN programme”. In the next 13 months which followed, we rushed to reach teachers, speakers, and sponsors, to get venues, and to craft documents from scratch. And because I was still serving my National Service in 2011 – the year of the first UNASMUN conference – my weekends were spent in meetings and scrambling to get logistics. My weeknights were spent on the computer terminal in my army camp, replying emails and typing out 62 pages of the delegate handbook. This was, after all, still the age of the Nokia mobile phone. Continue reading →

Throwback: Five Strategies From Five Years Of Facilitation

Did not get the chance to share this when I first wrote it last year, but – having run and managed training programmes, especially for Model United Nations and simulation conferences – I summarised five strategies for facilitation, ranging from the obvious (good preparation and taking on board criticism) to hopefully the useful (summaries of big, thematic ideas throughout the sessions as well as tailoring session based on needs). Continue reading →