SPsMUN 2024

By: A. Jabur

Every year, St. Paul’s hosts a two-day MUN conference where students from St. Paul’s and other schools such as Avenues, Graded, St. Nicholas, and BCB participate both as delegates and as chairs.
For those who don’t know, MUN conferences are completely made up of students; the delegates are those who debate representing countries or people, the chairs are those who moderate the debate and create the committee and its topics, and the secretariat are the ones who organize the conference as a whole.

This year, our secretariat was made up of Lucia Melcon, our incredible Secretary General who created an unforgettable conference, Anna Sapoznik, our COO who made sure everything ran smoothly, Vitoria Goerk, our Undersecretary General who made sure each and every committee was fun and successful, and Athina Kissajikian, our Press Director who divulged the conference, made a beautiful and accessible website and fiercely led the press delegates.
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Additionally, most of the chairs themselves were St. Paul’s pupils, including Ana Jabur, Ana Sabie, Bruno Sapoznik, Felipe Rizkallah, Claudia Gontijo, Gregorio Pozzo, Mariana Eguti, and Luccas Herndl.
This year’s conference theme, ‘Divided we fall, united we rise’, highlighted the importance of diplomacy and collaboration on world peace as a whole, as we all rely on each other for development and survival, both as nations and individuals.

SPsMUN started on Friday the 23rd of February at 16:30. After all schools had arrived, dressed in their best formal MUN attire, and chatted while eating snacks prepared by the incredible Sodexo crew, our opening ceremony began with speeches by the secretariat as well as Ms Lima, our incredible MUN director who helped us with anything we needed while navigating her very first conference as MUN Director after Mr Sousa resigned from the position last year. Soon, SPsMUN was declared in session and everyone was heading to their committees. After hours of debate, the day was over and it was time to go home and prepare for the day to come.

February 24th was the second and final day of SPsMUN. Delegates arrived at 9:00 to begin debating, and continued until 17:00. Speeches were given, questions were answered, and resolutions passed; several committees had to face crises which challenged them to think on their feet to solve an issue about their topic. During coffee breaks, pupils chatted about their committees, wrote resolutions, and got to know their fellow delegates.

At 17:30 the closing ceremony began, and after some final remarks by the secretariat, the chairs of each committee got on the podium to announce the prizes: best speaker, best delegation, outstanding delegation, and best position paper. Various St. Paul’s students, such as Tiago Junqueira, Gabriela Maranhão, Thomas Bicudo, and Alexander Edge were awarded prizes for their distinguished performances throughout the conference.

And with that, SPsMUN 2024 came to a close. In all, the conference was incredibly memorable and would not have been possible without the astonishing efforts of the Secretariat, the Leadership Team, and Ms. Lima. MUN is an incredibly special and fun activity that always leaves you with the best memories, improves your public speaking skills, and introduces you to people from other schools. This is why hosting our very own conference, and being able to give that experience to others, is always incredibly rewarding. We hope next year will be even better!