Members of the Woodward Academy Model United Nations club, better known as WAMUN, recently attended the Georgia Tech Model UN conference or GTMUN. Each committee is assigned a particular topic. Typically, two students represent a country. WAMUN covers a variety of essential topics that are relevant to today’s world such as financing small or medium-sized businesses, or SMEs, and improving STEM education for displaced children who are facing war. The delegates presented their views and perspectives on their assigned country and their best plan to solve the issues at hand. Additionally, they have resolution papers that are passed with a 2/3 majority vote or rejected by sponsors. Congratulations to Anjana Murthy ‘24 and Heather Frisch ‘23 who both won the Best Delegate award!
Front row: (left to right): Alizah Mudaliar ‘24, Zaara Khawaja ‘24, Shreya Surapaneni ‘25, Anjana Murthy ‘24, Heather Frisch ‘23, Efaobase Oju ‘25, and Kayce Brown ‘25. The Model UN members pose for a picture outside the GTMUN conference. Photo courtesy @wamodelun on Instagram.
Anjana Murthy ‘24, the president of Model UN, was assigned Latvia to the council of the European Union, also known as the EU, and was given the topic of financing SMEs in the EU. In order to combat this issue, Murthy thought of a way to utilize their budget to their advantage.
“We used the EU budget to target the most vulnerable SMEs from going bankrupt,” Murthy said.
After their resolution paper passed, which essentially means that the sponsors accepted it, Murthy felt accomplished due to their successful teamwork.
“It felt really good,” Murthy said. “Our resolution paper was 10 pages, and it was worked on by all of the people in my committee, so passing it unanimously felt good because all of us agreed.”
Heather Frisch ‘23, a cabinet member who specializes in being the web master, represented Australia under UNICEF. Her committee discussed equal systemic access to STEM education for displaced children including immigrants and internally displaced kids. She explained that her goal was to help children through the means of education.
“Our first topic was equal access systemic or improving access to STEM education for displaced children, so immigrants and internally displaced kids, especially children who are facing displacement through war,” Frisch said. “We’d like the general principle that education helps kids have a chance of a better future and [that] STEM is the future of our world.”
In order to combat her issue, Frisch created a draft resolution called the Pathways Plan. She expressed how her plan was targeted towards bettering children’s futures through funding education resources.
“Getting access to better help with internally displaced kids like immigrants and having them have the ability to get into their current school systems [was part of the plan] and just a general pathway to becoming a more developed nation,” Frisch said. “The entire point of it was just for countries to be able to have a good general database for resources that they could potentially use, using [Model] UN to improve their summer education.”
Frisch acknowledged how her hard work paid off with her being able to lead the underclassmen successfully.
“It felt amazing,” Frisch said. “I’ve never led a paper in the manner that I did this time before. I think it’s part of growing and becoming better at Model UN. Being a senior, I finally don’t have the imposter syndrome anymore. I was able to lead the block very well.”
She cherishes the sense of community that Model UN brings despite being on different committees.
“My favorite part about GTMUN is always the people that I meet,” Frisch said. “The country that I was mainly fighting against in this committee was strangely Russia. Even though I had to keep the debate within the committee room outside of debate, we would have fun and talk, and [we] shook hands.”
Since Frisch believed that GTMUN was her last Model UN conference in her high school career, she gave it her one hundred percent to end off Model UN strong. However, it was not her last conference as she found out that she is able to attend future Model UN conferences. Frisch relishes her accomplishments as her hard work from freshman year paid off.
“Winning felt like a very fitting almost end of the journey of Model UN,” Frisch said. “I think because the first conference I went through was GTMUN four years ago. I found out the night before [and] I had no idea what I was doing.”
Frisch reflects on her journey going from a novice Model UN member freshman year to leading her senior year and winning the Best Delegate award.
“Four years later, going back and being the leader of a block in my position, my draft resolution passed, and just the transformation to get to where I am today and how much I’ve grown means a lot,” Frisch said.
