Plus, the school’s model un club welcomes a special guest.
In late January, Mr. Alan van Egmond, Chair, Southwest Florida Model United Nations, visited Donahue Academy to speak with the school’s Model UN Club members. During the visit, he awarded Junior Anna Fulmer with a gavel in recognition of her leadership. “It’s a nod to all the work that I’ve been putting into bringing Model UN to the whole school and trying to get everybody involved,” said Anna. “We’re trying to instill in our chairs of different Model UN groups and schools the notion that the gavel is something that is deliberative. It’s usually used by chairs of committees and forums like Congress and the United Nations and has a sort of a symbol of authority, of leadership. These are all the elements that we’re trying to instill in our young people,” added Mr. van Egmond.
Recently, Donahue’s club returned from a Model UN conference with Nina Green and Vika Fulmer, both in Grade 10, winning ‘Most Outstanding’ and ‘Best Delegate’ awards respectively. “We just came back from the Canterbury Schools Model UN Conference, where we were specifically in a committee that had to do with water sustainability and conservation. Now, we both happened to be water scarce nations. I was Haiti,” recounted Nina. “I was Pakistan,” added Vika. “Yep. And that definitely helped our chances a lot,” Nina continued. “Nina is a very strong public speaker. She’s very confident and I just wanted to have her work with me because in our committee there’s lots of people who are first- timers, and I knew that, me and Nina, working together, we’d be able to do very well and help people to get to know Model UN better,” explained Vika. Nina offered the following description of the Model UN experience: “I would say Model UN is the grouping together of different schools’ Model UN programs into a conference where each student can help their committee form a plan, with a real-world problem, and give them experience with speech-making, with ‘people work,’ and even with writing papers!” Vika added: “the Model UN community is one of the most supportive, fun environments I’ve ever been in – probably because to be good at Model UN you have to be you have to have so many skills… all these people are extroverted, but they’re also smart; they’re good at speaking, but they’re also good with people. And everybody’s just… so fun. They’re so encouraging. When we went to the conference, we made friends with the whole committee. It it was so fun.”
Nina added that Donahue has about 10 delegates right now, but she doesn’t see a any reason why it wouldn’t grow in the future. Mr. van Egmond agreed: “This school has a reputation for having some high quality students for sure, and people who are not afraid to exercise leadership, and particularly Model United Nations is a perfect forum for them to do so.” Congratulations to Anna, Vika, and Nina!
