The COMUN journey this year has been exceptional. I am proud, satisfied and truly happy with the experiences I gained and how I saw myself and others grow mentally through this years conference. This conference could not have been possible without the support of our Secretary General of COMUN 2021- Anargi Jayakody and COMUN Faculty advisor: Dr. Daniel Lundin. This conference has taught me that as a unit, anything is possible(LO5 and LO3). We really thought that COMUN could never shift to an online conference but this year, for the first time ever we shifted online and that was actually a great experience.

Starting from PD2:

PD2 was a great experience overall and I learnt a lot about my EXCO as a unit there.

We all bonded, problem-solved and planned for our conference in PD2. It was better and improved from PD1 because we had a few concerns from the Faculty advisors from different schools such as Elizabeth Moir which needed to be handled by the Secretariat as a unit. The debate in committees also escalated during PD2 because people were slowly getting the hang of an online conference and myself and the tech team were always available for trouble shooting. The tech team lead by Lithira did an outstanding job this day. Many things that the tech team can be seen on the Comun website.

Training OSC Delegates:

We had very passionate participants this year. Such as Chirath, Lexi, Saesha, Pep and Devya. Me and Anargi truly enjoyed guiding them this year as they all proved to be very talented MUNers and Pep also won the Best News Agency as BBC in the conference  truly proving that Journalism is possible even in an online conference. This experience gave me some more chairing experience adding onto last year and (L06 and LO1), as leadership and discussing global issues has always been an area of interest and growth for myself. I felt that training delegates also helps me polish my skills of articulation, communication and engagement in leadership. It is defilingly a challenge as well because we had 3 Novice delegates and 2 returning International Press Participants which are 2 completely different fields in an MUN conference because they do not follow the same procedure. Therefore I had to up my game and learn both procedures and teach them to the Participants(LO2). Kahoots proved to be a very effective method to do so and the delegates were very interested in learning through that. Overall, this bunch of delegates helped me grow as a leader and I am glad that I could be of any help to their COMUN journey.

Conference 6th-8th March at Kingbury Hotels, Colombo-

The conference was an unforgettable experience. It was all tiring, exhausting, fun, an intellectual sea and much more. Even though our delegates were online, all of the EXCO tried their best to make conference fun and engaging for all. We managed to bring in Points of Entertainment and imitated many characters from movies and shows. We worked very strongly as a unit and the power houses were Anargi and Dr. Lundin, also our PGA and USG did a great job handling committees as well. The opening and closing ceremony were streamed live with the help of the OSC tech team and COMUN tech team. The EXCO met up physically with the permission of Dr. Kliess. The administrative staff also joined us at the location, switching in for each other for extra help. Here are some images of our EXCO working.

Something that Dr. Lundin told me to improve on for next year is to get better at delegating responsibilities because often he saw me overwork and do jobs that were meant to be done by other people.(LO1 and LO2). I took that seriously and tried doing that on Day 3 of conference and he said that It worked and I am getting better. He also mentioned something that stuck with me which was that he saw me grow over the span of 3 days from the time of panic to absolutely being on task and that was nice to hear, that I changed and matured for the better. (LO2, LO7 and LO3).

I also engaged in committee sessions whilst doing my job of financing, balancing and organising. I got to chair UNADC, GA1 and WHO from time to time which was exiting because it brought back memories from last year as I chaired GA1 last year. The level of debate skyrocketed this year within the committees I was in and the most interesting debate was in WHO. It was truly outstanding. I also saw the level of debate in GA3 which was very high.  During their resolution making, delegates really proved how difficult it is coming to a common consensus during debate especially amidst a pandemic and in an online conference. They even had to extend session until day 3 so that they could deal with the amount of Foreign Policy Violations they were getting. That truly amazed all of us including the secretariat.

One thing I never expected out of this conference was to win an award. At the closing ceremony, I won the most committed non-chair award. I was very surprised but also very grateful because I did work very hard during the course of this conference. From sending endless payment emails to schools and Ms. Vidya and Ms. Anushka(OSC Business office) to running around during the opening ceremony. (LO4)It was work I had signed up for but unforgiving whatsoever. I learned to grow as a leader and also learned about balancing, funding, sponsorships and providing a backbone to a student led conference(LO1 and LO2). Here is an image of the award:

The experience as a secretariat member was impeccable as I worked very closely with the SG and that taught me many useful things for next year as well. I learnt a lot from Anargi in terms of leadership and authority. She managed conference very well and led us to a successful conference online which was hard for her as well. The secretariat worked very well as a unit and taught me the true benefit of working collaboratively and handling different areas of conference from logistics, delegate training to committee sessions. The secretariat of COMUN 2021 deserves so much and the more I say about them is less.

SOS Village was also involved in this years community service project as an incentive for people to donate to the Community service project. As the service leader of SOS Village at OSC, we decided to collaborate with COMUN  to raise awareness as well as advocate for donations. We did not wish to  receive any money donations as that was not our goal but we decided to still raise awareness. Hope for kids and other service groups were also involved in order to receive donations from other schools to benefit their service. This was a good initiative taken by our EXCO to involve in-school service groups as well as outside ones such as COVID help centres to receive money donations in order to help the pandemic recovery in Sri Lanka. (L06 & LO7).

On a final note: The COMUN 2021 EXCO met online one last time to reflect on the conference. It was a very good session where we all appreciated our efforts and applauded how well conference went this year. We had no negative feedback from any school which is a first and we are very grateful that, that was the case. We plan on maintaining the same standards as this year next year and doing an even better conference. I also finalised the certificates and medals to be picked up from the OSC guard house which was an organisational thing I had to do so that all schools received there participation tokens as well as awards. Our final meeting, was emotional, sad and also happy. This years conference was just as much of a roller coaster but I am very proud of every single EXCO member and all the delegates and admins involved because it was not easy to adapt to these changes and daily problems but we made it and that is truly very rewarding. I am already looking forward to COMUN 2022.