If you’re new to Model United Nations and getting ready for your first conference, fear not! We’re here to outline the five ways a new MUN delegate can make sure to be as prepared as possible for their first Model UN experience. Even if you’ve had some MUN experience the tips and tricks below might still be useful in bringing your committee game to the next level. Here are some of our recommendations for how to bring you’re “A” game to committee.
- When you get your country assignment for a Model UN conference, the first step is to look up resources, such as the CIA world factbook and other fact sources (as found on our website), for general information about your country. What type of government system does your nation have? What size is its population? It’s important to know this so you have better background knowledge and can better research your topic specifically.
Research and preparation is a core component of the Model UN Experience!
- Once you know all the basic facts about your country a great way to start learning about its position on the topic of your committee is to check what the nation’s representatives have said about it at the United Nations. This can be done by checking the UN meeting minutes on their website. This resource is great for learning some of the past actions and decisions your country has made in regard to the topic.
- Another great resource in preparing for your first MUN conference is knowing what you need help with from rules of procedure to the things you don’t understand in the background guide. By knowing the issues you need help with beforehand, you can reach out to your chairs well in advance of the conference to have any questions on content, procedure or position papers answered. This is a great way to connect with the committee well before you get on-site at the conference.
- Once you have all the facts, background knowledge and your questions answered about the committee, a great resource for you to prepare for the conference is putting together a research binder. This can be done using a typical school binder and by placing all the relevant research, statistics and information you might need for committee. This way when you then go to write your position paper or talk to delegates about where your country stands on your committee issues, you’ll have all the information you need in one place.
- Lastly, on-site training plays a big part in the success of first-time delegates. In order to accommodate that, the Best Delegate Model UN Conference 2019(BDMUNC) has built-in extensive delegate training during the conference. So how do we plan on training first-time delegates at BDMUNC?
BDMUNC will have a series of pre-conference resources so delegates have specific knowledge coming from our team even before they get to the conference, and then following up that knowledge with experienced college MUN-er’s. The USG of Logistics will be going over training exercises with delegates over 2 training sessions on the Wednesday and Thursday of BDMUNC. These trainings will include everything from public speaking games all the way to how to write a MUN resolution! Looking for these types of resources in a MUN conference, make sure to check out BDMUNC registration here: bdmunc.com/registration
