Students Find Ways to Grow MFS Quaker Model UN Conference During Pandemic

The Quaker Model United Nations Conference III (QMUNC III) took place virtually on November 20-22, hosted by Moorestown Friends School. The keynote speaker was Megan Schmidt, Quaker U.N. representative at the Quaker United Nations Office in New York. The concept of a Model United Nations conference based on the Quaker testimonies was the brainchild of Anna Goula ’18. Although the topics have changed from year to year, each QMUNC committee is based around one of the SPICES: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. This year’s topics included the Korean War, post-World War I reparations, black market organ trafficking, the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis, gender-based violence in refugee camps, and the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. Combined with traditional Model United Nations procedures, QMUNC allows delegates to consider, discuss, and debate world issues with Quaker values in mind. 

When Kayla Patel ’21 and Christine Chandran ’21 decided to design and plan the third iteration early in 2020, they had no way of knowing that a pandemic would change everything. 

Change, it did. “Once the pandemic started, we started thinking about how the conference could take place virtually,” said Christine. “We did some practice runs, working with MFS Summer Programs students to help figure out how we could plan a MUN conference virtually.”

The dilemmas they faced, and eventually solved, included things like how to adapt parliamentary procedure to the virtual space, how to provide communications tools for delegates to conduct meetings and conversations, and much more. “We wanted to incorporate a worldwide community,” said Christine. “But, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.”

The secretaries-general spent hours on phone calls and email exchanges with students and faculty from other Friends schools, some of whom had no familiarity with how Model UN conferences worked. “We had delegates and schools participate whom we never had met or communicated with before,” said Kayla. “There were times when we were trying to explain what Model UN was to teachers and they mistakenly thought we were fellow teachers.”

They created a virtual conference with international participants from Lebanon and Costa Rica and doubled the number of delegates and schools from previous conferences. “Once we started realizing the power of a virtual conference, we began to bring in schools from beyond the Philadelphia area, across the U.S., and even some international schools,” said Kayla. Over 100 students spent three days participating in the event.

As restrictions on gatherings loosen, the two are anxious to see how QMUNC student leaders approach future conferences.

“Even as in-person learning and events come back, it may not be feasible for schools to travel,” said Kayla. “We can now operate in the in-person and virtual spheres.”

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