Dearest delegates,
It is with the greatest excitement that I welcome you to the iconic New York City and to EKIN SNY MUN 2025! Our Secretariat and Chair Board have put an incredible amount of effort and love for international relations into preparing three committees that will put you in the hot seats of key UN bodies. During the three days of this conference, you will be tasked with debate, deliberation and decisioning that will change the world and lay the groundwork for our future - and I am so excited to see the future that you craft for us through your resolutions.
As a native New Yorker, I am especially excited to welcome you to what I believe to be the best city in the world (but I may be a bit biased). While you’re here, I hope that you experience not only Model UN but also the city’s world-renowned restaurants, museums, shows and more. A Thai restaurant called Soothr in Union Square, the Egyptian temple in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Wicked on Broadway are just a few of my favorite recommendations. I am confident that experiencing Model UN in New York is something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
My first Model UN conference was at the United Nations itself when I was just ten years old - which means that my MUN career is now seventeen years long. In that time, I have not only competed as a delegate but also served as Secretary-General of four conferences, coached a high school MUN team, Chaired and Crisis Directed countless committees and founded my own MUN conference - so it’s not an understatement to say that I love Model UN. MUN has taken me all over the United States and as far away as Spain, China and Turkey. I am forever grateful that I decided to join my middle school MUN club because it’s brought me some of my best friends and most inspiring experiences and helped my timid ten-year-old self find her voice and become the global public speaker that she never could have imagined becoming. Whether you are joining us at EKIN JMUN to learn more about global issues, to become a better speaker or to participate in an extracurricular with your friends, I know that you will leave with all of the above and so much more.
A quote I often pass at the United Nations reads, “The United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.” The three UN bodies that you will simulate during EKIN SNY MUN are carefully curated to encourage you to confront some of the direst problems facing humanity today. Model United Nations is all about believing in the power of global cooperation to tackle these problems; and I look forward to seeing all the creative ways that you will propose in committee to do just that. The thing I most look forward to observing at each Model UN conference I attend is, If young people ran the world, how might we change it? More quickly, more collaboratively, more empathetically?
EKIN SNY MUN will be full of opportunities to learn something new, leave your comfort zone behind and put my hypothesis to the test – how will you bring positive change to the world?
All the best,
Raina Kadavil
Secretary-General
Ekin SNY MUN, March 2025