Fountainhead School Model United Nations is a huge event that occurs every year in fountainhead school. Model united nations is an event organized for students all over the surat for students interested in learning more about diplomacy, international relations, and different committees in United Nations and Lok Sabha (Indian Committee). MUN is a way for kids to improve their public speaking skills, gain confidence, and learn about global issues. I have been participating in MUNS since the age of 11, I have done almost 4-5 MUNS. Since this event is such an amazing event, I wanted to organize it. This year, in FSMUN 9.0, I was in the core committee – Organising Committee Head for Logistics. We started working for the event in September, since it is such a huge event, it was a huge responsibility and commitment, and it took time to present our best. The event was on the dates 19th and 20th of November 2022. Throughout the journey I was able to learn a lot of things, as mentioned below:

Learning Outcome 2: Since this event is planned on a huge scale, we had a lot of responsibility. As I was the OC head for Logistics, I had to manage a lot of delegates, Executive Board members and the OC team for event management. The main challenge throughout the experience was managing the event with every team. Since logistics is the centre point, it is dependent on every team be it decor or finance. Working with a lot of people is not what I specialize in but I can easily manage people. I was able to manage our OC team and also managed to get work done by everyone so that the logistics are clear and clean. I have managed multiple events before although this one was a huge one for me. It was a little challenging handling the pressure and managing my studies with the event. I overcame the challenges by taking help and communicating my difficulties so that the work can be distributed and get done by the deadline. I never knew that I could handle such a huge event so effortlessly. It was a lot of work but it was a delightful experience.

Learning Outcome 3: I am a very organized person and it is my passion to organize such events. Working with people and knowing their points of views makes me happy. Since I am an organized person I know how to manage my time and events accordingly so that there’s no inconvenience. The difficult part was planning the event rather than initiating, since FSMUNs occurred before we had the idea of how to initiate the event but planning the minor details, doing things keeping the deadline in mind and answering the advisors when certain challenges pop up was extremely difficult. After managing FSMUN, I know what and how events like these work and not if events occur where I have to plan or initiate an event I would be ready to work on it and handle various difficult situations. One thing that I have learnt from this experience is that planning and initiating is a very crucial skills to learn for one’s day-to-day life. Planning and organizing minor details of my day, week and month are extremely important and through managing events like these, I can manage my life as well. Planning and initiating events helped me in my day-to-day life and I can implement it in my life successfully. 

Learning Outcome 4: Since it was a long-term experience, a lot of perseverance and commitment were required to complete this event. Throughout the event, I had to be in contact with numerous people and some of them were very aggressive or chilled out that working with them became extremely difficult but I kept my perseverance and remembered that I am committed to this project and dealt with them with all the patience I had within me. I am a very indecisive person and find committing to things a little difficult but once I get my mind to it I don’t back out. One main thing I learned from this experience is that I need to have a commitment within me and the strength to deal with people, advisors and various team members. This taught me how I should be committed to my work and show perseverance so that I don’t back out.

Learning Outcome 5: Working with various people is not a very difficult task for me since I have a huge patience level and I love talking to people. Although sometimes it gets difficult when I have to rely on people to complete their tasks as I don’t get satisfaction until I crosscheck or redo the work by myself. Hence it is a little 50-50 situation for me when it comes to working with people. However, while I was working with this set of groups I was able to trust them to complete their work and put out the best version. It was a little difficult at the beginning but after a few meetings, I got comfortable with their working style as I understood how good they were at their assigned task. Although, there were a few people that were a lot difficult to work with because despite multiple reminders the work wasn’t ready which messed up a lot of things, since our team was very cooperative and supportive we were able to solve the issues but people like these ruin a lot of things which cause a lot of problems. This is what I have learnt as well that it is important to work collaboratively with everyone so that the result is better working together makes things easier and faster. Working independently is good but working with people makes your work more diverse as it has multiple opinions and perspectives. 

Learning Outcome 6: As MUNs are about discussing issues that are all over the world. We decided upon agendas that are going on around the world and are huge issues that should be addressed to. This MUN had 8 committees, UNSC, UNHRC, UNGA, Lok Sabha, WHO, IP, UNOOSA and DISEC. Except for IP (International Press) all the committees had agendas that discussed global issues such as Boko Haram, Cyberterrorism, Space technologies, discrimination against people based on their identity, Conflict arising in Northern and Northeastern states of India, Veto Powers and Establishing precautionary protocols for future epidemics and pandemics. All of these issues are spread around the globe and the discussions that occurred in each committee were very healthy. 

LO7 – Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions
I had to bring delegates and Executive Board members from out of the city and maintain their logistics, I had all of their details and I had to make sure that none of this detail was slipped out to anyone. Additionally, it was also important that on an event like this, PDA policy was maintained and that was also one of the challenges to make sure everything was working according to the policy, ethically. These issues did not affect me directly since I made sure nothing went out of control and no one was hurt if any issue arose. Maintaining ethics is important, especially in the real world where people acknowledge and praise you for your ethical stability, hence these issues did help me in real life.

To conclude, throughout this experience I learned a lot of things and had a lot of fun since managing events is one of my favourite things. I enjoyed the entire experience. The journey was stressful but the outcome was just the best. This event helped a lot of people overcome their public speaking fears and helped them learn loads of new things since it helps gain a lot of knowledge based on what’s happening worldwide.