This Saturday, February 24th, was the second day of the Minas MUN conference. They continued the meeting sessions for all committees. In the Security Council, the chairs, Laís Taranto and Tatiana Chen, our EABH students, were very confident and excited about their position because they had each other to help.
Being a chair is an important part of the MUN debate because it helps the discussion move more smoothly and ensures the delegates don’t talk over each other. In short, they make sure everything is in place and organized.
However, chairs had a difficulty organizing the first and second meeting because they not only had people from American schools, but from Brazilian ones as well. This meant that the procedures were different (which was not a bad thing since they managed to combine both). Delegates can’t clap during the debates, so, in American schools, they shake their hands back and forth; Brazilian schools, on the other hand, snap their fingers. However, delegates did have a problem using personal pronouns, since they can only refer to themselves as their delegation.
Nonetheless, Tatiana and Laís tried their best to find a solution to this problem. They decided to write all of the protocols that are used on the board. This ensured that people weren't confused and didn't know what to do. The chairs patiently answered every question about the steps, words in English, and helped them elaborate their questions if they had any difficulties.
As a result, on the second day, the delegates were already accommodating with the new and different procedure, despite still making a few errors. They would always correct themselves whenever they said something incorrectly, but now with more knowledge of the procedure. In an interview conducted with Laís Taranto, she stated that “I imagine it must be really hard for them, but I think they are getting the hang of it really fast. We wrote everything on the board, like the basic things. We also talked to them, and they were really trying to change their habits and followed everything they could.”
We can see that our EABH chairs were exceptional problem solvers, trying to get everyone comfortable and organized during all meetings. This shows incredible communication skills and real leadership from our EABH students!