EF Academy Torbay Model United Nations Club

All EF Academy Torbay students came together today to begin our yearlong Model United Nations schedule. Today we began to  consider our issue of global importance, which is climate change. The school houses were split into countries of a similar economic condition and then the tutor groups were all assigned a country within that type. Some were advanced nations like the US and the UK. Others were ‘newly industrialized’ nations like China and India while others made up countries that are affected by climate change on a huge scale. Students were given information packs about their country, its economy and its carbon emissions both present and historic. The aim of today’s MUN was for our international students to consider other peoples place and impact in the world to promote understanding between nations. It was also an opportunity to understand the role of the United Nations and how our young adults can begin to understand and shape the future.

The day started with students being put into sections of the school that related to their type of country. So, for example, we had developing nations on one corridor and advanced nations on another. This allowed countries to move around to discuss isssues with each other. Each was given an information pack about their country and a task pack taken from the MUN website. After watching a short film about climate change students began to look through their countries information pack and to research their countries economic conditions and industrial output, their carbon emissions and the effect that climate change has on their country.

Students were given clear targets for the presentation that involved considering their emissions targets and the targets of the other countries if a country was affected by climate change as many of the less developed countries are they were asked to tell the other delegates about this in order to help convince them of the need to cut emissions. Students gave fantastic presentation at our nearby town hall in front of the entire school. The quality of the analysis and the passion and commitment shown by students was brilliant.

This is stage one of our MUN plan and the next stage is to join smaller groups from different areas of the issue for a debate so that by the end of the year we will be able to create a proposal for international agreement on carbon emissions.