We want to introduce Eesan Balakumar, the Executive Director of the Yale Model United Nations Institute (YMUNI). YMUNI is the Model UN Summer Camp co-sponsored by Best Delegate and Yale.
My name is Eesan Balakumar and I am the Executive Director of the Yale Model United Nations Institute (YMUNI) and I want to cordially invite you to apply to attend YMUNI. YMUNI is one-week summer program held at Yale University that is geared towards providing the best forum for high-school students to develop their leadership skills and Model UN and debate strategies. In my experience as a Model UN delegate from high school through college, I noticed the lack of a effective training module that could be used by students to improve their skills. Best Delegate has done wonders to fill this void with their training materials and online coverage of high school and collegiate MUN. Along with Best Delegate, we have decided to take the current resources one step further by organizing a summer program for promising high school students that we hope will become a Model UN fixture for years to come.
The YMUNI team has been working hard to ensure that the student experience at this one-week summer program will be incredibly enriching. The primary purpose of the program is to develop students’ debate and diploacy skills throgh Model UN and further apply those faculties in thinking and discussing issue of leadership and international relations.
We are proud to introduce our uniquely crafted curriculum to achieve this end. Students will engage in various activities that will improve their critical analysis skills and expand their understanding of important global issues.The curriculuum is formed by three main areas of study: Model UN skills and strategies, leadership, and issues of international relations.
The Model UN-focused components of the curriculum were formulated by utilizing the same lesson plans and practice materials used by the Yale Model United Nations Team, one of the top ranked collegiate Model United Nations teams in the world, in conjunction with the training materials created and developed by individuals from BestDelegate.com, who will also be teaching at the Institute. The lessons devoted to leadership and international relations were crafted by consulting some of Yale’s most prestigious professors as well as the Yale International Relations Association’s community high school education program, which has garnered rave reviews for years. Some of the topics that we will deal with are resolution writing and policy creation, styles of leadership, effective role of a leader, and modes of critical thinking and how to approach international relations. The teachers for the camp will come from Yale’s Model United Nations Team, which is one of the top ranked collegiate teams in the world, as well as BestDelegate.com, Model UN’s premier source for MUN training resources and news.
In addition, we have several exciting events planned! From speaker lectures from some of Yale’s most prestigious professors to a field trip to the United Nations, the program shcedule is filled from morning to night with exciting and fun activities.
Applications can be found at our website, www.ymuni.yira.org, and are due on April 15, 2012. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at YMUNI@yira.org. Also, we would be grateful if you could forward this e-mail to the rest of your team and other students who you may thing would be interested.
