On the afternoon of Thursday February 12, students from Yorktown made their way to the Washington Hilton Hotel for the North American Invitational Model United Nations (NAIMUN) and stayed there until Sunday night.  The students were there to role play delegates of the United Nations and stimulate UN activities.  When students ‘role play’ delegates they are really signing up for actual hours. The activities ran for ten hours straight every day the students were there, and there was even a crisis one of the nights at midnight.

Sophomore Isabella Turilli  has been a part of model UN since freshman year and represented many different countries, from Sudan and Saudi Arabia, all the way to Egypt and Algeria, in five different conferences. Being a part of Model UN at Yorktown is helpful for students taking Advanced Placement (AP) classes .

“I take Advanced Placement government so a lot of familiar topics are included in the course and  (Model UN) has improved my public speaking, my people skills, and my ability to synthesize and correctly analyze information” explained Turilli.

At this specific conference there were 3000 different delegations (or clubs of Model UN) but Yorktown was the only club represented from Arlington.

This conference (NAIMUN) was not like most conferences and was not run to standard procedure so there was no actual winner (or country).  The delegates had to be available at almost all hours of the day and one night there was a ‘crisis’ where they were called in at midnight to deal with issues, just like a real life scenario.

Sophomore Khin Kyaw was not part of the crisis group but was very much involved in the rest of the conference.

“I represented the delegation of Georgia in this conference but for other conferences I’ve been the countries of Mali, Cambodia  and Burma” said Kyaw.

The point of Model UN is to bring students together to debate topics that are occurring now or did occur in history. They are able to learn how to communicate with other students to reach one common goal, while also learning about the world around us. The club meets every tuesday after school in room 331, and new members are always welcome.