New Beginnings: Co-MUN

This year I decided to join Co-MUN to try out something different.  So far we’ve been brainstorming ideas for what we can do for UN day in terms of the activities for each grade.  After two sessions it was decided that the theme would be: Youth and Media.  This was developed from an idea that my group came up with together on Privacy Rights (based on the issues with the Snowden case that we had all heard on the news) (engage with issues of global importance).  In order to make the activity different, since it has always been a debate, one of my group members had the idea for splitting the 11th grade and 12th grade (our assigned students) into 4 groups and then having them create a video at the end of the 2 hour long session based on the topics we give them (work collaboratively with others).  These video presentations will have to present the issue and the problems with it; how it affects youth and society.

So far the ideas we have had for those 4 topics are:

• Snowden case: national security; whether the government should really know EVERYTHING about us.  What if it falls into the wrong hands? (like it has in the US)
• Misuse of Facebook: lately a lot of people in our school have had people impersonating them; taking all their photos and creating a completely new profile
• Tumblr: How things that are posted on blogging websites like tumblr can influence the thoughts and perspectives of the young generation.
• News: whether news really narrates to the rest of the world what is happening exactly as it is; or if they are making things sound more worse than they actually are.  i.e. The crisis in Syria; there’s a lot of commotion and chaos that seems to be going on.  Is the media attracting too much attention to it?
  I know for one that whenever I watch the news about a certain country, but then I hear later from a person who’s been to that country.  I am completely shocked; because the way news reports it, it sounds too chaotic and too dangerous for anyone to go.  And I’m sure it definitely is, but you do question how much you can believe from the media.  Especially when the news channels are always known for mostly displaying bad news.

I’m excited to see where our ideas will go from here and how it will actually turn out on UN day.  So far this activity has really helped me in thinking deeply about the issues that exist in the world today; try to understand the impact it has on society and what develops out of these issues (engage with issues of global importance).  It’s been pretty exciting and I’m curious to know what else we will be doing after UN day.