In the early hours of Tuesday 4 February 2020, the delegation representing Cirencester Deer Park School headed to Holland for the annual Model United Nations Conference.

Luckily for our pupils we had time to go in to Amsterdam and visit Anne Frank House, where we took part in a workshop and had an audio tour. An incredible and moving educational opportunity.  Our young people started as they continued, by doing us proud: within 5 minutes of being on train someone commented on how polite they were.

Wednesday was the official first day of the conference and the day kicked off with pupils meeting at Alfrink College before being put into a group in preparation for their trip to The Hague where they would find out more about an issue linked to their community. During the morning the 12 pupils had the opportunity to visit Humanity House, a charity established to provide support for refugees in The Netherlands. Whilst at Humanity House the group had the chance to find out about being a refugee in Holland by visiting an exhibition and also by listening to the story of a refugee from Azerbaijan. Find out about The Hague Peace Projects. The rest of the Deer Park pupils visited the Dutch Parliament and explored the political system and even had the opportunity to see parliament in session. Both visits helped put into context students' roles within the Model United Nations.

Back at the college, we marvelled at the Opening Ceremony, with Joachim Verweij’s opening film,  introducing us to the key theme of the conference. All schools were introduced, and guest speaker Judith Ndukwu gave an inspiring speech about her very own journey as an Activist raising awareness of LGBTQi+. Following the ceremony the pupils joined their committees and started to familiarise themselves with the sophisticated and professional terminology and the way in which to address the committee and the Chair.

Thursday, day 2 of the conference, and our pupils, dressed in their finest attire, were back in their committees to finalise their resolutions and begin lobbying. This long process involved pupils having to speak to all other delegations to get signatures and co-signatures to take their resolutions to the Approval Panel for passing. This was the day that some Deer Park pupils began to speak out and we could see the confidence growing in our delegates.

That evening pupils met for the famous ‘MUNA party’, all organised by the MUNA student staff and a great way to further bond friendships between delegates of different nationalities.

Friday, the last day of the conference came round incredibly quickly and pupils were straight into their committees to continue the discussion of their resolutions. In the afternoon 3 resolutions were debated in the formal final General Assembly, directed by the President of the General Assembly. It was great to see one of the Deer Park delegates address the entire assembly through a question! Following the final committee plenaries, where pupils voted on superlatives such as ‘best delegation’ and ‘most likely to be a world leader’, it was time for the conference to officially end with the closing ceremony. Closing film MUNA 2020.

Following a very successful conference, our Deer Park delegates bid farewell to their wonderfully accommodating Dutch host families on Saturday morning and embarked on their journey home. After an exhilarating week of debating, travelling, dancing, note writing, exploring, lobbying, partying, friendship forming and learning, we arrived back at Deer Park School, exhausted but happy. In the words of the distinguished chair – clapping was definitely in order!

Marcel De Haas, Head of Bi-Lingual department at Alfrink College, commented "15 years of MUNA. We couldn’t have done this without the support and friends who were there from the beginning. Thank you Deer Park staff and students for your enthusiasm, support and special friendship."

Miss Lillington, Associate Assistant Head