The Story of YOMUN 4.0.

Grade 11 student, Shrey, helped organise and carry out YOMUN 4.0. last weekend, the fourth edition of the Youth Online MUN. After months of preparation and sending emails and marketing on social media, the time had come for the event. Although careful preparations were made, bestlaid plans are never immune to emergencies and last-minute changes. We reached out to Shrey to hear his reflections and about what had happened during the event.

My deep appreciation for what the UN does is further strengthened by reflecting on these two days – Shrey, Grade 11

45 minutes before the YOMUN 4.0. event opening ceremony, Shrey checked and double-checked that everything was in place: “I told myself that instead of feeling good about pulling it off so well, before the event started, it was better to go through the checklist again”. Audience, check. Participants, check. “I knew that I had struck the perfect unity of prose and poetry, that my words would achieve the resonance to make a significant if small, contribution to the world”, says Shreya who was to deliver the opening speech. Then the phone rang. The Chairperson of a major committee would not make it because of illness in the family. In other words, Chairperson, uncheck.

“As peers panicked, I must confess that I did too. Only then did the path emerge”, says Shrey, who took over the chairing of the committee. Given all his participation in Model UN she was ready. The YOMUN 4.0. was his grand achievement, and he was the Director-General after all. “As my metamorphosis into a chairperson took place, Director-General, Shrey, still had things to do”, says Shrey, who with his parents blessing had taken time away from studying and to prepare for the event.

Before the opening the Chief of Staff and Secretary General were locked into a heated argument over some Zoom accounts not working, each putting it on the other. “I wanted to brush off the conflict given the additional responsibility I had assumed but realised that was deserting my role as the Director-General”, explains Shrey, whose role required him to be an expert multi-tasker – hearing both sides of the argument and finding a compromise settlement.

During the next two days of the YOMUN 4.0., 100 participants were locked in debates over topics ranging from prison system reform to women’s reproductive rights, and at other times simple banter that would form the basis of lifelong friendships. “With the multitude of voices representing a multitude of realities in every debate, we kept seeing that the world is flawed. Flawed, but fixable, no matter how tiresome the fixing is”, says Shrey, who received a letter of commendation and video message from the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he feels is a real evidence to the changes made when taking part of the MUN.