The greatest challenge associated with hosting AMUNC was the uncertainty involved. From bidding, to seeking sponsorship, to marketing to delegates, our team disseminated a vision for AMUNC 2010 that we hoped would be sufficiently compelling. Thankfully, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, our team hosted a conference of which we are very proud.

The highlight of the week for me was watching the Crisis Council simulation of the final days of World War 1. As I watched the furious flurry of proposal and counter-proposal, I almost felt that I had been transported back in time. For me, it was a microcosm of all that we had sought to achieve with AMUNC – to allow delegates, for a week, to escape beyond the classroom and live and breathe the life of an actor on the international stage.

Undoubtedly, the most rewarding part of the AMUNC experience was the human factor. I was blessed to work with an incredibly talented Secretariat and a tireless Host Team. The experience of hosting AMUNC together has been the glue in many of my most valued friendships. Also seeing a new generation of MUNers emerge at AMUNC 2010 has been very edifying. I hope that this group will make Model UN in Australia even stronger in the years to come and wish this year’s Host Team all the very best.

When the chance to create all of that for a new generation of MUNners arose, I couldn’t wait to begin. Foolishly, I had no idea the enormity of the role I’d just accepted.

The hardest thing about writing this reflection is that I can’t seem to construct one simple sentence about BrizMUN 2012 that isn’t shamefully bragging, or blatantly self-congratulating. This is because I am so proud of what my Secretariat achieved this past April I swear I could burst. After suffering some pretty major setbacks early this year, the entire dynamics of BrizMUN shifted. As sole Secretary-General, I had to pull a team together and create a MUN that, for some reason, refused to work. With no venue, no speakers, no insurance and no money, my spectacular Secretariat and I created the biggest BrizMUN to date in only two months.

I doubt you’d be able to find a MUN Secretary-General not completely in awe of their Secretariat, and my experience is proof that an amazing team is really all you need in creating MUN success. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by brilliant, intelligent, capable people, all of whom worked tirelessly in making BrizMUN 2012 the biggest and best we could. From finance to socials, to committees and publications, the gifted and incredibly motivated BrizMUN 2012 Secretariat planned and plotted tirelessly, to make sure every delegate caught the MUN bug.

One thing I have fully appreciated as BrizMUN Secretary-General is the Queenslander’s inherent refusal to do things by halves. Over one small weekend in April, we crammed two social events; a fully-functional International Press Gallery, complete with press conferences, live blogging, and the publishing of a glossy magazine; two incredible guest speakers; and seven brilliant committees. Almost half our delegates were first-timers, and I’m sure we gave them the MUN bug that will keep them coming back as long as they possibly can.

As for me, you know you’ve got the MUN bug when you try and find ways to put off graduation to continue MUNing. Unfortunately, a haircut and a real job calls, and AMUNC this year will be my final MUN. At the risk of sounding emotional and a trifle over-dramatic, the skills and the friends Model United Nations have given me has been life changing. On top of the ability to lead a Secretariat and advocate on important and pressing international issues from many different viewpoints, I’ve met some amazing people and made life-long friends. I hope my time as BrizMUN Secretary General succeeded in creating those opportunities for the next generation of MUNners. The greatest success any Secretariat can have is giving the new kids the MUN bug. I know the 2012 AMUNC Secretariat is also working to that end, and I cannot wait to see what the La Trobe kids have in store for us this July.

So how did I fall into this addiction? In 2010, I was a lost, naïve and lonely first year who decided to take to plunge and go to my first MUN ever – AMUNC. I only knew a couple of people who were attending this mammoth 600 delegate conference and I was extremely apprehensive about the week that lay ahead.

AMUNC 2010 exceeded all my expectations by creating the perfect balance of intellectual stimulation and socializing with like-minded people. The debate was dynamic, the socials were pumping and it was, all round, an amazing week. Since then, I’ve been hooked.

There are some people out there who question the merits of simulating an international organ accused of being a ‘toothless tiger’. And to them I say, you clearly haven’t MUNed. Year after year, AMUNC attracts absolute beginners to MUN elites. It is the premier event which unites the Australian MUN community for a week of fierce debate and festivities. Student leaders, international law whiz kids, military and strategic defence gurus all gather to share knowledge among the tertiary community. MUN enhances textbook theories of international relations because you represent an actor that can shape international responses to some of the major issues that face the global community. AMUNC always promotes student development and is actually not all that scary despite the number of delegates involved. There is a sense of camaraderie that stems from writing draft resolutions, forming country blocs and passing amendments.

And then there is the social aspect of AMUNC. You can’t get through an AMUNC without a sudden spike in your Facebook friends. What resonates most for me is that it doesn’t matter what university you’re from and all state rivalries are cast aside in favour of cooperation thus reflecting the values of the real UN. Oh and let’s face it, the social events are amazing (nothing beats 600 MUN nerds getting crazy on the dance floor).

To conclude, to all MUNners new and old, here are a few tips and hints:

Aim high and do your best in committees  – as a delegate on an international organization you have the potential to shape the world and make fundamental improvements to the lives of many;

Make as many friends as possible – AMUNC gathers the brightest and most fun people in a really encouraging atmosphere;

Unwind, de-stress and don’t worry – A lot (if not most) of the students who attend have little to no Model UN Experience, so treat this as a learning opportunity;

Never stop having fun in MUN – whether it’s committee session or the social, don’t get too bogged down with committee sessions and be sure to enjoy yourself;

Come with your enthusiastic self to enjoy an amazing week.

Congratulations to the AMUNC 2012 Secretariat for the amazing conference preparation. We know you have been working tirelessly behind the scenes and we can’t wait for July to roll around because AMUNC will be epic!

See you all in Melbourne!!

Ange

President

University of Sydney Model UN Society

P.S. So here’s a shameless plug and a bit of advice. If you absolutely love AMUNC and you can’t wait a whole year to get another MUN fix, come to SydMUN, hosted by Sydney University, 23^rd-25^th November. We’ll spam you with more details later.

Nicholas Metherall: So Sheila, how did you first get involved in AMUNC?

Sheila Nanda: The first time I got involved in AMUNC was when I attended AMUNC 2009 in Brisbane as a delegate in UNFCCC COP-15. Then the next year, I attended AMUNC 2010 in Sydney as a delegate in The 2nd General Assembly.

Wow, you’ve had more AMUNC experience than me! Have you enjoyed the conference in the past? What has been your favourite part of AMUNC?

The best thing about AMUNC for me is that it has enabled me to make long lasting friendships with many people from many different countries. AMUNC is lots of fun and a great place for networking.

Coming to AMUNC 2009 and 2010 must have been expensive, where did you look for funding and potential sponsors to support you coming here?

That’s right it can be expensive to pay for flights, accommodation and transport as well as the conference fee, so I had to raise funds in Indonesia before traveling to the Conference. I looked for funding in Multinational Companies, State-Owned Companies, Government Institutions, and Banks.

How did you approach them?

I had a list of media and companies from a project that I worked on at university. I made phone calls to the contact person of each company on the list (usually in the marketing division) and sent my proposal. Though for some of the companies, banks and government institutions, I directly contacted the ones who were in the executive positions (CEO, CFO, Director, etc) because some of them were lecturers in my faculty at the time.

Did you approach them alone or with a friend? What about the rest of your delegation?

I gave my sponsors list to the rest of the delegates in my delegation and they also shared the contacts of potential sponsors that they knew. We then called almost all companies in the list and had meetings with many of them to convince them further about our proposal and negotiate.

How did you explain why you needed funding?

When I contacted the potential sponsors, at first I offered them a sponsorship relationship instead of asking for money only from them. So just like any other sponsorship relationship, we give them publicity in a lot of promotion tools in our university in return. Create a sponsor banner, give announcements thanking sponsors, put logos in the university’s newsletter and event program, take out advertisements or mention sponsors in a newspaper article and print logos on T-shirts. Some of the companies or organisations required me to give them photos of my AMUNC activities to put in their own promotion tools for their shareholders or the public.

How did you market yourself?

I made a proposal which contained my profile and I also attached my CV when I sent the potential sponsors my sponsorship proposal. When I made my CV, I made sure that I listed all my academic merits, awards and scholarships achievement.

How did you market AMUNC?

I explained what AMUNC is all about in the proposal. I gave emphasis to the benefits that I got from AMUNC to the organisation itself, to community, and to myself. I also convinced them that it would be good for their Coprorate Social Responsibility (CSR) program. I needed to research about their CSR programs first before I contacted or had meetings with them and tried to find any relation between AMUNC and their CSR programs.

What advice do you have for others struggling to overcome the financial obstacles of attending this conference?

Just don’t give up on trying gain sponsorships because it can be tough when you get a lot of rejections from the potential sponsors.

How should other applicants put together their strategy/approach?

For me there were four key steps:

1. Make a sponsorship proposal which contains an explanation about AMUNC, your profile, your budget (as detailed as possible), and the sponsorship packages proposal.
2. List all the potential sponsors that you possibly know
3. Make phone calls and send proposals to the potential sponsors
4. Follow up with the potential sponsors and set meetings with them so that you can negotiate better with them and be more persuasive.

This year AMUNC will be held in Melbourne. Have you been to Melbourne before?

Yep, I have visited Melbourne twice. The first time I visited Melbourne was after AMUNC2010 in Sydney. I went back there for a holiday and to visit friends last year. International delegates will be able to witness distinctive cultural pluralism of Australia in Melbourne.

I’m glad you think so Sheila. Well, thanks for all these great tips. I hope that other delegates can also find these ideas useful.

Sheila Widya Nanda is a graduate from Universitas Indonesia who is currently working as a consultant and business analyst in Jakarta. In November 2011, Sheila accepted the task of promoting the conference to Indonesia. In her role as Asia-Pacific Liaison Officer, Sheila has approached many different universities and student groups to raise awareness about the conference and encourage participation of students from Indonesia. The result has been the registration of 11 different university delegations from all over the country and the secretariat are excited to play host to around 100 Indonesian students this July.

Obviously we were all extremely excited by this display of interest. Year after year, the organising committees of AMUNC have worked to expand the participation of this conference and really try to get people from all over contributing their ideas – the coming together of different people with different ideas to talk out any given topic is the point of the United Nations. Our entire team is proud to have made a significant contribution towards this goal.

With this came some hard choices about how to give everybody a chance to attend the conference. The option existed to put a minimum amount of requests on approved delegations, however, it is strongly felt within our secretariat that this unfairly disadvantages international delegates who may not have had the opportunity to attend the conference in the past, or may not be coming from a strong Model UN culture that would allow them to field a larger group. This year’s 3 is next year’s 8, and any of them are a potential Best Small Delegation Award recipient. Even providing the minimum numbers requested – head delegates nominate a range that they would like to fall within (5-15, 15-25, 25-40, etc.) – put us nearly 200 positions over our limit.

What we did instead was use maths. And by “we”, I mean “somebody other than me who is able to use maths”.

As I understand it, a formula (magic spell) was worked out that would reduce every delegation by some amount depending on how many positions it had requested, similar to a taxation system. The gap between small and large at this stage is much narrower than in previous years, and no committee is going to find itself overwhelmed with delegates from the same place. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and I have been particularly unpleasant and stressed over the last fortnight trying to work out how this will work (while at the same time going through the first stages of a self-imposed sober period – bad timing). Raph Haycraft (Committees) has, in his usual fashion, taken it all in stride, done most of the work and none of the complaining. From my point of view, we’re a good team.

Reception to our work has been largely positive, and for that we are extremely grateful. We have spoken to the universities that were most heavily affected by the allocations and they have all been understanding and even encouraging. Head delegates have a tougher role this year in allocating positions, and competition will be fierce. Hopefully this will result in a high quality of debate and committee session. More positions may become available at a later date and in that event I intend to reward the delegations who have done right by us and been mature in their reaction to the news. At the end of the day, no single delegation received everything it asked us for. We would love to be able to hold a conference that includes every single person who wants to attend but in order to keep the more intimate experience that AMUNC provides, offering every attendee a real opportunity to get involved in their committee, we have to have a realistic cap on numbers.

We look forward to seeing you all in Melbourne in July for the most culturally diverse AMUNC yet.

Looking back on it, I think I was crazy. Running AMUNC is tough. It’s tougher when you start with nothing.

So I sought put together the best of the best. I rang up well-respected MUNers from all over Australia, asking them to be on my host team. I got together an ‘A team’. This was a radical decision, as never before had the AMUNC host team consisted of people fron different universities, it had always consisted of people from the host uni. I got the idea from the way AMUNC did director recruitment, opening the jobs up to one and all, so that you get the best people.

Once I had a team, I approached ANU. My right hand woman was Lauren Wilson, and she was amazing in meetings. Together, we secured tens of thousands of dollars in sponsorship. On top of that, we got the High Court of Australia on board! Australia’s highest court agreed to host the legal committees.

The o-week in 2011 saw the appearance of an ANU UN Society. We joked that the new society’s mascot should be a phoenix, as the society had risen from the ashes.

From then on, the AMUNC 2011 story was no longer my story, but our team’s story. With an amazing team, AMUNC jumped from success to success. The committees team introduced a number of wonderful new committees and created innovative linkages between committees. The socials team organised dazzling events, including a ball at parliament house, a night at the war memorial with war memorabilia handing above, and a circus night complete with acrobats and other performers. The speakers team organised ambassadors to speak, as well as the former foreign Minister, Gareth Evans; the Chief Justice of the High Court, Robert French; ICJ Judge for the Japan v Australia whaling case, Hilary Charlesworth… And much, much more!

My job throughout all of that was to keep my team motivated and supported, negotiate competing interests between portfolios, and lend advice. I have a lot of MUN experience so it is good that I can lend it when it is needed. I was told the hardest part about being an SG is keeping a smile on your face no matter how many problems there are behind the scenes, or how tired you are. I used to work as a clown, so that was no problem for me.

In the end, the conference was a success. It was the first time it had been held in Canberra, and the first time it had been held at two host institutions (the High Court and ANU). We reached maximum capacity, with over 600 attendees – AMUNC had officially surpassed EuroMUN in numbers (EuroMUN is the regional Model UN in continental Europe).

It’s good to look back on things. I remember sitting at the Finale Ball, on the final day of AMUNC 2011, reflecting on things after winning a MUN lifetime achievement award (the one and only award I’ve won in my MUN career lol)… I looked around at everyone having a great time and I thought ‘all of this… it almost didn’t happen.’ Its nice to think that I was the one that had the guts to take on AMUNC 2011, when no one else would.

The Secretariat is excited to announce our Official Hotel for AMUNC 2012.

Alto Hotel on Bourke is right in the centre of the city making it easy for delegates to catch public transport to La Trobe University for committee sessions and registration. It is also in a prime location for the incredible social events that we have planned.

But location is not the only reason we have partnered with Alto Hotel on Bourke.

By staying at Alto Hotel you are making a commitment to the environment. As one of Melbourne’s only resource-smart and environmentally friendly hotels, Alto Hotel shares the same commitment to sustainability as we do. Alto Hotel is a carbon neutral hotel and is powered by 100% renewable energy.

This commitment to the environment has earned them the Victorian Tourism Award 2011 Qantas – Excellence in Sustainable Tourism for the 3^rd year in a row which places the hotel into the Hall of Fame. They were also the world-wide winner of the Conde Nast Traveller – World Savers Awards 2010 for Environmental Preservation.

We have negotiated a special rate for AMUNC 2012 delegates. This rate includes free wireless access, free parking for electric or hybrid cars (and recharge stations powered by 100% green energy), a newspaper upon request, access to the gym, and free organic and fair-trade espresso coffee!

The ‘green rate’ available to delegates is only provided by Alto to guests from organisations who share the same ethics in relation to the environment, and social and economic sustainability. This mutual commitment will allow AMUNC to continue to grow into the future, allowing the next generation of delegates to enjoy what AMUNC has to offer.

Check back to the accommodation page soon for the code to use to receive this special rate.

In the mean time head to www.altohotel.com.au for more information.