I have always had an interest in COMUN (Colombo Model United Nations) ever since I was in grade 8, it’s just the idea of being something bigger than yourself seemed so appealing to me. At the start of this academic year, I decided to join COMUN, now I love debating and I was drawn to the idea of participating as a delegate for the conferences but with the amount of research required I decided to apply for an EXCO (Executive Community) position instead (not because I am lazy BUT because IBDP requires too much out of me already).
When I was talking to Aura, she mentioned the list of EXCO positions available for me to apply for. The position that caught my attention the most was “head of community service”. I have always been passionate about giving back to the community, and I have participated in various service events. For example, I was part of the “Hope For Kids” service in school and have also provided food and other items to orphanages in rural parts of Sri Lanka in my spare time. I expressed my interest in taking on the responsibility of being the “head of community service” to Aura, and I was really excited about it. There was also the position of “deputy head of community service”, which was equally important as I needed assistance in communicating with over 30 schools for donations. That position was given to Nayara.
But first, you are probably wondering what is MUN really? Well MUN, which stands for Model United Nations, is a miniature version of UN debates, the UNGA, and many more aspects that revolve around the UN. To learn more about COMUN and what it really is you can check out the website here made by the tech team or the Instagram page made by the media team here. As I said before I had the honor of being part of the MUN EXCO this year, which meant that I helped organize the conferences and in my case as “Head of Community Service” I helped organize a community service project.
As the head and deputy head of community service, Nayara and I faced the challenge of choosing a cause for all 30 schools to donate towards. We wanted to make a real difference and help those in need. After considering many ideas, Nayara suggested donating to 2 schools in Puttalam, a rural area in Sri Lanka. Once we agreed upon the idea, we began making arrangements and identifying the necessary items that the schools needed. The first thing we did with the help of Nayara’s dad was contact someone who knew people in the school and ask them what they needed the most, after doing so we started making a list of all the things needed.
Once we had brainstormed ideas and figured out all the items we wanted to donate, we assigned each of the schools one item to donate, that way we were able to balance all the donations we get and there would be equal amounts of all items. This was all written down on a separate document which you can see here.
We also had to create posters (which Nayara had made using her “cool” Canva skills (don’t tell her I said that)) in order to spread the word about our donation drive and also because it made us look more professional (that was just an added benefit).
Once we had made all preparations such as finalizing the donation list (link to finalized donation list here which was sent in the email to all the schools) and confirming with the contact that Nayara’s dad had referred us to, we had to send out an email to all 30 schools in order to convince them to donate (this was one of the hardest parts). We sent out the email 2-3 weeks before the conferences were held so that schools would have enough time to donate the necessary items.
Once we had sent out the email to all the faculty advisors from each school we waited for donations. Although Aura had told us that since we were collaborating with SLMUN (Sri Lankan Model United Nations) we could ask them for donations as well and so we had also sent them our posters to share them with the schools they had been partnered with to spread the word and receive as many donations as possible. To further spread the word we had also asked the media team to make posts about the donation on their Instagram page so it could reach as many people as possible.