Model United Nations (MUN) event hosted at BGU campus!

On Thursday 10^th October, enthusiastic members of our staff and student communities hosted a model United Nations (UN) event – with a primary focus on cultural intelligence and soft skill development for attending students.

The conference style event took place on campus at Constance Stewart Hall, involving cross-departmental staff and student collaboration and drops ins from a variety of disciplines across the university.

For this event, teams of students each represented countries across North, Central and South America. Student delegations came from Lincoln College, Thomas Deacon Academy, Boston Grammar School, Queen Elizabeth Grammar School and the university.

Learner materials were co-developed with Ms Margaret Juan (Co-ordinator of the Gender Policy Unit at the Central American Integration System (SICA) and former Belizean Ambassador to El Salvador). Ms Juan also recorded a welcome speech to the student delegations.

To start the day, a trading simulation event took place, followed by three workshops.

Each of the workshops focused on one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which included topics such as climate change, educational policy and economic pressures.

Ian Pownall, Senior Lecturer in Business and Enterprise at BGU, gives further insight into the workshops: “Each team was provided with a budget, in either excess or deficit.

“In order to achieve their national goals, bearing in mind the international impact and their SDG, students had to work with other countries on spending or recouping their budget.

“During activities such as these, each teams’ decisions were monitored in order to accrue points across the day and create an environment of healthy collaborative competition.”

Educational MUN events have been taking place for a similar amount of time to United Nations operations themselves. They have been and continue to be utilised in multi-level educational settings, from early years to higher education.

BGU’s MUN event was sponsored by The Christine Pownall Estate, to support international team working in education. Due to this, a prize of £1,000 was available to be won on the day!

Ian continues to explain the positive impact of hosting an MUN event: “Students who attended today have gained the experience of being part of a dynamic and challenging workshop with unfamiliar learners, unfamiliar cultural contexts and competing goals.

“In doing so they have been able to develop their cultural intelligence and personal skills of negotiation, problem solving and team working.”