Article by: Emily Barlow Photo by: Farah Armoush, Qatar Academy Doha
Ahmed Al-Hajari is a grade 11 student at Qatar Academy currently serving as Secretary General of MSMUN-Q. Ahmed has been involved in MUN for five years and he’s attended around twenty-two conferences both locally and internationally. He started with MSMUN after he got the position of junior MUN coordinator. Being a junior MUN coordinator in Qatar Academy helps to prepare or teach the inexperienced Middle Schoolers MUN from scratch.
“That was a very hard thing to do just because of how complicated Model United Nations is.” He started to have a connection with the students that he was teaching. This inspired him to keep going and to apply for the position of Secretary General. “The thing I like about the middle school MUN experience is that it gives younger students and juniors a chance to have these leadership roles in this conference.” He believes that MSMUN is a way of connecting the high school and middle school students in all the different schools. Only a few schools in Qatar currently have a middle school club and those middle school clubs are held and lead by high school students.
“I feel that MSMUN connects and serves as a bridge between the middle school and high school students and I think that’s something that lots of schools are missing within the world because of the gap that there is between the middle schoolers and the high schoolers.”
Ahmed stated that the advice that he would give to the middle school delegates is to not hold themselves back and to not be afraid to speak out. “Everyone makes mistakes, if you make a mistake it’s fine because MSMUN is a learning experience and it’s good to learn from those mistakes and to not repeat them again.” Ahmed is sure that the delegates that he’s been mentoring are going to be a full potential in the conference because of the excitement that they have in club meetings and the amount of excitement the middle schoolers have for MUN.
So far the best part of Ahmed’s MSMUN experience is having a connection with the middle schoolers. This project has proven to be useful to building that bridge between the high school and the middle school. “Earlier before I started with these students I’d see them around school but I’d never acknowledged them. Now we’ve worked very closely with them it creates some type of relationship.” If Ahmed was to describe MSMUN in one word he would say “it’s exciting or it’s a learning experience.”
Ahmed believes in the power of MUN to help “generate the believers of tomorrow”. He hopes that this passion for MUN can be led for further generations.
As for the delegates participating in MSMUN, they’ve been showing a great sense of excitement and are anticipating the upcoming conference. Ola El Aker, the ambassador of France, is an eighth grade student at Qatar Academy involved with MSMUN. She hopes to gain the experience of working in a committee for a day. She wants to work with younger people and people that are her age. Ola joined MSMUN because she knows that she will also be participating in MUN in her high school and IB years. She stated: “I just want to know what I’ll be doing for the next four years of my life.”
Sama Ayoub is a seventh grade student at Qatar Academy taking part in MSMUN. She is also a student ambassador of Mexico. Sama hopes to gain a lot of experience from MSMUN that will help her with her daily life and her future job. “MUN helps students to gain confidence and it helps solve world issues.”
