The NAIMUN 2012 Co-Executives: Secretary-General Taylor Wettach and Executive Director Caitlin Pharo
KFC and I just wanted to say thank you to the NAIMUN staff, especially Secretary-General Taylor Wettach, Executive Director Caitlin Pharo, and Director-General Billyskye Handel, for having us visit this past weekend.
Everyone on the staff was open with us and they really wanted us to cover NAIMUN in depth. We enjoyed working with the staff before the conference even began by sharing their articles on how they were organizing the conference. When we arrived on Thursday, we were energized by their passion for NAIMUN and for Model UN.
Taylor, Caitlin, and Billyskye were great hosts, helping us arrange interviews with different members of their staff. Billyskye even prepared a spreadsheet on different stories we should look into and who we should talk to, which we really appreciated. You can check out my final interview with Taylor and Caitlin below:
We also wanted to thank guest liveblogger Hayes Brown for helping us cover the conference. I thought his articles were a breath of fresh air because he really took the time to interview staff members and tell their stories.
Here are all the articles from the pre-conference featured series and the liveblog articles from the weekend:
The Horace Mann School received Best Large Delegation at Georgetown NAIMUN, which was effectively this year's high school Model UN championship
Georgetown’s North American Invitational Model United Nations Conference (NAIMUN) was effectively the high school Model UN championship conference of the year with so many Best Delegate-ranked teams in attendance. And the delegation awards went to…
Best Large Delegation – Horace Mann School (New York)
Outstanding Large Delegation – Mira Costa High School (California)
Best Small Delegation – West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (New Jersey)
Outstanding Small Delegation – Canterbury School (Florida)
Horace Mann received Best Large Delegation for their third conference in a row, also winning at Princeton PMUNC and U.Penn ILMUNC, and this is what the team had to say:
The crisis staff of the US National Security Apparatus
Many Model UN conferences feature crisis committees and NAIMUNwas no exception — the conference had 39 committees (which might be a Model UN record) and half of them were crisis-based — but I was really impressed with NAIMUN’s innovative approach to developing their crisis committees, and I think they’ve furthered the concept of what a Model UN crisis can be.
Guest blogger Hayes Brown interviews Arun Avva and Sam Brothers about NAIMUN's new organ, the US National Security Apparatus
This NAIMUN guest liveblog post was written by Hayes Brown, a nine-year Model UN veteran who writes for UN Dispatch and his international affairs blog, At Water’s Edge.
Amr Lehata, Crisis Manager of the Egyptian Interim Cabinet, wears an Egyptian flag pin proudly on his lapel. Talking to him, it’s easy to see that he has a vested interest in his committee, being Egyptian himself, and having culled most of the events the delegates face from the real world events that have swept his country. Starting his delegates off on February 12, 2011, the day after longtime President Hosni Mubarak resigned, the committee and crisis team have worked their way through the linked fate of the Middle East together, as unsure of the results as the protestors in Cairo.
This NAIMUN guest liveblog post was written by Hayes Brown, a nine-year Model UN veteran and former GCIMUN Secretary-General who writes for UN Dispatch and his international affairs blog, At Water’s Edge. Walking into the British House of Commons committee, whose real-life counterpart features heckling and aggressive questioning of speakers, a certain lack of decorum [...]
Liveblogging is hard work, and it takes a team of bloggers to provide in-depth coverage on a Model UN conference that’s the size of NAIMUN. So KFC and I brought backup. I’m happy to have Hayes Brown, a nine-year Model UN veteran and former Secretary-General of GCIMUN, here at NAIMUN with me to blog about [...]
Washington, DC, is an exciting place for students who are interested in international affairs. Various countries, international organizations, non-profits, and NGOs have embassies, headquarters, and offices here — in addition, of course, to the offices of the United States government. The NAIMUN Secretariat is well aware that DC offers myriad opportunities for delegates to learn [...]
Over 3,000 high school students from 22 countries have gathered in Washington, DC, for one of the biggest Model UN conferences in the world: the North American Invitational Model United Nations Conference (NAIMUN) hosted by the Georgetown International Relations Association.
Over 700 delegates from 8 Southern California schools attended this weekend’s Surf City MUN Conference hosted by Huntington Beach High School. The Best Large Delegation awards went to Mira Costa and Edison, and Palos Verdes and Gahr received the Best Small Delegation awards. One highlight of the conference was the joint crisis between the cabinets [...]