First year student Helen Pörtner writes about her recent trip to Alesund. To the Zonta Club. Here she writes about her experience.

The week before November Break I was given the opportunity to go to Ålesund to visit the local Zonta Club.
Zonta is an international organization with the goal of advocating for women’s rights. It was founded almost 100 years ago out of the struggle for women’s right to vote in the United States. Today there exist groups all over the world who run projects for women and girls on both a local and global scale.

Besides these projects, Zonta awards girls and young women with several prizes and scholarships every year. One of them is the “Young Women in Public Affairs Award”, which is directed to girls between 16 and 19 years old who take initiatives and have been proven to demonstrate “superior leadership skills and a commitment to public service and civic causes”.

The prize gets awarded on three levels: a local level, a national and an international. Just before coming to Norway and RCN, I learned that, to my surprise, I was awarded one of the 10 international prizes.

My local club from Germany decided to find me a contact in Norway (networking is also a big part of Zonta) to visit while staying at RCN. I got in touch with the ladies there and thus was given the opportunity to travel to beautiful Ålesund. I had an amazing stay with one of the Zonta-ladies; she showed me around Ålesund and on Tuesday night I went to their monthly meeting. After one club member had spoken about a project in Sri Lanka that she is involved in, I was given the opportunity to talk a bit about the award, about projects that I have done back home and also about UWC and especially RCN. The next day they were running a fundraiser-tombola for, among others, the project in Sri Lanka.

I was surprised to realize that none of the ladies knew about RCN and UWC in general, although it is quite a unique place in Norway and also not too far away from Ålesund. They are very much looking forward to visiting sometime!

I am very happy and thankful I was given the opportunity to go there and I really hope to be able to cooperate with them on a project!

We are happy to join in with the congratulations to the Rafto Foundation! For thirty years this Bergen based foundation has been relentlessly supporting champions of Human Rights, shedding light on the heroic resistance of individuals and organizations around the world. Thanks for allowing our students to take part in your inspiring work, for giving courage and support to everyone associated with this urgent cause. A large group of our students were present at the award ceremony for this year’s laureate Yanar Mohammed at the weekend. Staff and management were present at celebrations to follow it, at Håkonshallen and Grieghallen. The grand finale at the end of the celebrations included breath taking performances with artists like Kygo, Morten Harket, Sondre Lerche and the multicultural Bergen group Fargespill. We echo their message that the voices of human rights are needed as ever before!

It has been a pleasure to host the Nordic National Committees (representatives from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden with a special guest from the Latvian NC) on campus for their Annual General Meeting this weekend. Their itinerary has included connecting with students, meeting for their AGM and with members of the Education Management Team and the Admissions Development Team, and attending the Asian Show in the Høegh. We are looking forward to working together, following encouraging discussions, to launch a Nordic Short Course in 2018 (perhaps in tandem with Red Cross Youth with a view to promoting both UWC and Red Cross values) – this would give us the opportunity to extend our UWC impact and to take advantage of our spectacular campus in the summer and facilities.

It was a great honour to be a part of the 13th annual SANMUN (Sandefjord and Nesbru Model United Nations) conference held near Oslo on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th of November. SANMUN is one of the biggest MUN conferences in Norway and welcomed up to 170 delegates from all around Scandinavia with a delegation also coming from the Netherlands. This year’s SANMUN conference was mainly aimed at tackling the global issue of “Development” which is especially relevant for countries which are constantly suffering from violence, conflicts and political instability.

As usual, UWC Red Cross Nordic was represented. This year by a delegation composed of Paula Bausch (Germany), Precious Dlamini (Swaziland) and Lamine Male (Senegal). The delegation was representing the Republic of Iraq in the general assembly and we were on three different committees; the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), Disarmament and International Security Committee (DISEC) and Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (SOCHUM).

The topics discussed in the different committees were mainly:

• Measures to prevent the smuggling of migrants
• The question of women’s rights and members of the LGBTQ+ community rights
• Measures to regulate and decrease cybercrime

As delegates, we had several meetings prior to and during the MUN in which we discussed the way in which we would like to approach the conference as a whole. One of the most important aims of these meetings was to represent our country while respecting the position of the current Iraqi government. Therefore, in all committees and in the general assembly, we were contributing to debates and seeking the best resolutions reflecting the ideology of the current Iraqi regime. It was a great opportunity for us as students to be in the shoes of representatives of a nation in the UN. This simulation made us all realize how the real United Nations work and how hard it is to draft resolutions and find general consensus between a large number of states with very different backgrounds and interests.

Although the three of us have had some prior experience in Model United Nations, participating in this year’s SANMUN conference was a truly enlightening experience. We had the opportunity to meet and interact with many other enthusiastic delegates from all over Scandinavia – which was truly amazing. Moreover, since all three of us are going to be chairs for the UWCRCN MUN 2017, we had an opportunity to observe the way SANMUN was conducted and find new interesting ways for improving the upcoming MUN conference which will be hosted at RCN in the New Year.

Overall, SANMUN was a very educative and fun experience. It helped us to improve skills such as public speaking and collaborating with other people in order to put together a resolution. All of us deeply enjoyed every second spent at the conference and wish to have further experience and fun in MUN in the future.

Lamine Male
On behalf of the UWC RCN delegation (Paula Bausch and Precious Dlamini)