In the weeks following the successful execution of PD 3, the Executive Committee (EXCO) and Secretariat were extremely busy preparing for the final conference which was held on March 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Preparation involved finalizing debate topics, filming videos, content creation for our social media, finalising details with our sponsors, collecting and organizing awards/certificates, sorting out final details for the conference days, etc.
The first day of the COMUN XXX conference (March 1st) was held at the Overseas School of Colombo where we held our opening ceremony in the morning. We were honored to have the Deputy Resident Representative Ms Malin Herwig from the UNDP attend the ceremony as our Chief Guest Speaker. After the ceremony the conference was officially open and delegates went to their respective committees where they proceeded with debate on various relevant topics and global issues. Debate for day 1 ended at around 17:00, allowing for an hour of chair feedback within committees.
For the second day of conference (March 2nd), once again held at the Overseas School of Colombo, delegates went straight to committees where debate started straight away in the morning. Discussions from the day before were continued, and later that afternoon each committee formed, printed and accepted resolutions to their respective debate topics. Resolution documents can be found here. Debate continued until 18:00 and the COMUN XXX tech team and EXCO were hard at work making conference videos as well preparing preliminary award nominations in their committees respectively.
The last day of COMUNs 30th session (March 3rd) was held at the Taj Samudra Hotel. Delegates arrived for a day of crisis debate similar to that seen during PD 3. During the day while crisis committees were in session, the EXCO and Secretariat finalized award justifications and the tech team finalized the preparations for the closing ceremony. The closing ceremony was held that evening from 16:00-19:00, during which time we handed out awards for each committee, watched the COMUN XXX recap videos and listened to speeches from the Secretariat, a number of sponsors and our Chief Guest, US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, H.E. Julie Chung. A live stream of the closing ceremony can be found here.
However, while the conference was executed rather successfully, out team and I still encountered a number of challenges along the way. For example when preparing for the event it took a lot of time and negotiation to find an available venue for the 3rd day of conference while staying within the budget. Coordination with vendors and sponsors prior to the event was another challenge we navigated, trying to ensure that they were all happy while still getting work completed on schedule. Additionally we did run into some problems when arranging the creation of various printed materials in preparation for the final conference, however we persevered and will hopefully be able to wrap up the business well before the end of the academic year.
You may find further information on COMUN and the 30th session on our instagram and our official website.
Additionally, our heads of Community Service have been hard at work organizing this year’s Community Service Project (CSP). Since COVID-19 and the Economic Crisis in 2022, many Sri Lankans have been suffering from chronic and multidimensional poverty. Moreover, many public schools are facing increasing challenges, including dropouts due to unaffordable basic needs. Thus, for this year’s CSP, they decided to host an inter-school donation drive, where each COMUN participating school has been requested to donate according to their assigned category. These categories were nutrition and sanitary. Joining COMUN in this understanding, a second year in a row, is SLMUN, the largest Model United Nations conference in the country. The partnership between the two leading conferences in the country is capable of creating significant change in not only the lives of these students but potentially influencing entire communities. All the donations will be packed into an “essential need pack”, which will go to a school in Nagamadu village, in the Puttalam district. This school caters to both Sinhala and Tamil children, a large number of whom are orphans and deprived of basic necessities such as food and sanitary items. To this end our CS team currently has almost more than 100 pad packs, resulting in approximately 3000 pads.
Learning Outcomes:
- LO2: Demonstrates initiation of student led activities.
- LO3: Demonstrates self-challenging, learning development of new skills.
- LO4: Demonstrates perseverance in action.
- LO5: Demonstrates collaboration and working with others.
- LO6: Demonstrates work with global values.
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