There was little time for silence, or apathy, this weekend at the U of A when 480 High School Students from Northern Alberta gathered at the 2012 High School Model United Nations Conference. Students spent their Thursday, Friday and Saturday discussing possible “resolutions” to many contemporary global issues.

The U of A High School Model United Nations Conference (HSMUN) is an annual event run by U of A and hosted at the University’s North Campus. Each high school student attending the conference has the opportunity to take on the role of a UN delegate, representing a country or non-governmental organization. Seven multilateral committees worked individually to draft resolutions to various international issues before presenting them at a plenary session on Saturday afternoon.

The conference was run entirely by student volunteers, the majority of who attend the U of A. After being recruited in early September, some of these volunteers spent their time researching and blogging on the topics of debate. Others were involved with writing stories for an HSMUN newspaper that is published during the conference, or creating a fake “international crisis” that the high school delegates needed to address during their three days at HSMUN. All of the volunteers were present at the conference itself in order to help facilitate the debate.

HSMUN was founded in 2002 Andy Knight, chair of the Department of Political Science. The organization’s mission is to enlighten high school students about the complexities of international relations while encouraging them to become active participants in policy discussions internationally and locally. This year marked the beginning of a three-year collaboration between HSMUN and the Rotary Club of Edmonton Riverview. The generous support of this club has allowed HSMUN to greatly increase the size and reach of the conference.

For information regarding the HSMUN 2012 conference, please contact Nolan Sawatzky at 780.964.1010 780.964.1010.

Believe it or not, spring is just around the corner.

Your Riverview Fundraising Committee has a target of raising $2500 through Backyard Boys and Girls projects this year.

You can help in two ways:First, if you or someone you know has a project that a group of 5 or 6 Rotarians could tackle in a day, let us know. Our experts estimators will meet with you or the interested party to scope out the project and give an estimate of how much time it will take. We then ask the person to make a donation to the club that is commensurate with the size of the project. We're looking to do 5 or 6 projects between May and October, so we're thinking that donations would be somewhere in the $500 range. Of course if anyone has a one or two hour project that you're willing to make a small donation for, we'd certainly try to accommodate you.

Please send your proposed projects to Mic Farrell (mic@telus.net) and we'll take it from there.The second way you can help is by coming out to work on any of the projects. We hope to schedule one project per month, usually on a Saturday. We'll usually finish the day off with some food and fellowship. So please prepare to join us for at least one Saturday over the next 6 months. 

A great experience was had by all with our GSE  Group Study Exchange group from Australia!