Who are we?
We, the organizers of PORG Model United Nations, are all the students of Gymnazium PORG Liben, all currently in the junior year, all from one class. Our team consists of 6 members: Petr Kaftan, Miroslav Crha, Vaclav Maixner, Jiri Lhotka, Petra Jirutkova and Nikolas Petrov. We have all been classmates for over six and a half years; some of us have known each other for other ten years.
An external professional advisor to our team is Alexandra Bartsch from Germany, highly experienced MUN both participant and organizer.
Our goal in organizing a model United Nations conference is to bring together young innovative and motivated people from all across the globe to spend four unforgettable days debating and co-operatively looking for solutions to pressing global challenges. We not only aim at educating participants about current world issues but also underlining the crucial importance of the United Nations in global diplomacy. We hope to give rise to new friendships that cross the borders of culture, background and nationality and thus enhance a new generation of leaders and thinkers.
What experience do we have?
All of our team members have extensive previous experience with both organizing and participating in model United Nations conferences. We have been active and passionate members of the international MUN community ever since our freshman year of high-school. As delegates, we have represented a remarkable variety of different UN member states in nearly all of the existent UN committees and councils.
PREPORGMUN
In June 2013, after coming back from BALMUN in Rostock, an exciting idea sprung up to organize our own Model UN conference at our school, gymnázium PORG Liben. The idea gradually became reality. In the months that followed, Vaclav Maixner programmed and designed our conference webpage. Petr Kaftan, with the assistance of Miroslav Crha, wrote all the texts for the all the different parts of the webpage, including the texts for the application procedure, the preparation procedure, the conference program and a text explaining the nature and modus operandi of Model UN conferences in general. Miroslav Crha wrote the Conference Rules and the Introduction to the Security Council. After compiling information from various sources, Petr Kaftan proposed several different possible committees and a number of plausible themes for each of the committees.
PREPORGMUN eventually hosted two committees: Political and Financial Committee and UNESCO Committee and the Security Council. The committees and the council were chaired by former students of Gymnázium Nad Aleji, current students at the Charles University in Prague and experienced MUN participants: Katerina Novotova, Jan Zdralek, Helena Svandová, David Lojkasek and Tomas Opat. The President of the Security Council was Marketa Studena – an experienced MUN participant and the organizer of muniMUN – a widely known MUN conference in Czech Republic's second largest city Brno. These students prepared the so-called research papers that the delegates could use to prepare for the conference.
Two months prior to the conference we opened the registration and began to contact schools throughout Prague by sending out invitation letters and e-mails. When a delegate registered, we assigned them a country in the committee that they have chosen. We made sure that every single one of them received the Delegate's Handbook, the Conference Rules and the research papers for their committee. We answered all the questions that the delegates had for us and continuously contacted them with up to date information. Meanwhile, we worked out a detailed on-site logistics plan. We also prepared all necessary materials for our Chairs and met up with them several times for a mutual information session.
With a total of 60 delegates, the conference was a tremendous success. The reactions and evaluations of all present teachers and delegates were nothing but positive. After the conference, our press team published the PREPORGMUN Reporter – a short news booklet with articles, interviews, reportages etc. of the conference.
Baltic Model United Nations (BALMUN)
In May 2012 we participated in our first ever conference MUN conference; for four days we intensively debated in Rostock, Germany at the Baltic Model United Nations (BALMUN). We took on the roles of delegates from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Rwanda and Sweden.
Subsequently, we rigorously and actively propagated the opinions of our nations attempting to seek compromise with other nations based on mutual interests.The debate entirely absorbed us; we instantly fell in love with the whole concept of a Model UN conference and right then right way did all of us know that this was not our last conference. In May 2013, we unanimously decided to come to Rostock again. This time, we had the privilege of representing India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia and again tremendously enjoyed the debates.
The United States
Miroslav Crha spent the first semester of the academic year 2012/2013 studying comparative politics in the United States at Pace Academy in Atlanta – a school recognized with the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education and undoubtedly one of the best high-school institutions in the United States.
In addition, In January 2013, two of our members – Petr Kaftan and Nikolas Petrov participated in a one-day MUN conference at Sidwell Friends School – a highly selective private school in Washington D.C.
Munich
In the summer of 2013, we decided that the time was right for us to take our MUN participation to a whole new level and the five-day November MUN conference in Munich seemed as the absolutely perfect opportunity to do so. In November 2013, we travelled to Munich for the conference organized by the European School of Munich and not for a single minute did we regret our journey.
The conference was nothing like any of us had ever experienced before. As the delegates of South Korea, many of us took the unique opportunity to speak before the three-hundred delegate General Assembly. The debates were unimaginably fruitful, all of us acquired more knowledge and experienced and came back from the conference overjoyed and culturally enriched.
Vienna
Having decided to organize an MUN, we were looking out for opportunities to learn from other, more experienced MUN organizers so as to make the best MUN we could. A great opportunity came with the Model UN Workshop Vienna 2013, held in Vienna in July 2013 in an actual UN building. A part of our team (Jiri Lhotka, Vaclav Maixner and Miroslav Crha) went there and received great advice from other participants, who were all organizers of already established MUNs and who came to Vienna from all over the world (Brazil, Russia, India,…), as well as from several members of the actual United Nations.
Amongst these were names such as Maher Nasser, the Director of the Outreach Division in the UN Department of Public Information, or Nikolaus Lutterotti, the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The whole conference was held by the United Nations Youth Associations Network, whose presidents, Michael Klampfl and Michael Hardegger, were also present to give us advice about how the real UN works and how to simulate it the best.The whole workshop was very beneficial, especially since we got to know the work of the real UN and the mistakes that are often committed when simulating it.