COMUN 2021 was completely online this year. It was three days of learning, creating, and a lot of listening for me this year. The first two days are where we go to the committee we picked but on the last day, we write a group article where we collaborate with people who were from the same agency.

Day 1 and 2 – For Day 1 and Day 2 I was writing an Editorial piece and a News Article respectively. Since the first day of the conference involved delegates giving their statements on their country’s stance and then moving into moderated caucus where a lot of sub-topics related to the mandate of the WHO were discussed. Therefore for my article, I wrote down a lot of the stances that were spoken about showing perspectives for and against the topic and the propaganda my news agency sputnik supports. Taking into account the feedback the chair’s for IPC gave me in practice debate 2 I wanted to provide the readers a broader perspective and still stick to the views my news agency would support (LO1). I did this by taking down a lot of quotes but changing the perspective in which they were taken, for example, if a country’s views did not support the political views my agency had, I just framed them in a more negative way while not giving false information related to the pandemic. Since I was in WHO for the first two days it was important that I was not deviating from the truth because the pandemic is a worldwide crisis and most countries are facing similar problems that cannot be changed (LO6). Day 2 was when the resolutions for the WHO were written and discussed. This is what I discussed in the article as well. I included all the points of discussion in the resolution and why they were important to be discussed in the conference (LO1). There were a lot of topics that were covered throughout Day 2 and usually the voting on resolutions occurs on the same day and I would report on that as well but the time ran out, therefore, that was left for Day 3.

Day 3 – On this day we were doing crisis situations and the committee we were reporting on was changed and we were collaborating with people from different schools who had the same agency. I reached out to my partner for the article and we shared a document. We allocated different sections of the article and then at the end, we brainstormed more things to add, delete, or edit in order to make the article coherent and consistent (LO5). Since the conference was very long we even decided to take notes on different crisis situation and updates. Therefore I would take notes for a 5 crisis situation or updates and then my partner did the same. In this way not only was our workload divided but at the end when we were organizing everything we had two different writing styles and perspectives that came together (LO5).

Overall it was a completely new experience and I really enjoyed collaborating with someone who was experienced. I gained a lot of insight from them on several things that we could do in an article. My research and writing skills definitely became really helpful as I had learned these from investigating journalism that we covered in school.

 

Learning outcomes in this post –

LO1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

LO6 –  Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance