From 7th till 9th of November I had the honor to participate in Catalonia Model United Nations Special Meeting that was a part of Casa Asia East-West dialogue. This Special Meeting was organized for the young people aged between 18 and 30 years old selected by UNA-Spain from their solid youth network. Actually, we were only about 30 persons participated in the whole Special Meeting. Well, explaining the background of the event I would like to quote the information from UNA-Spain website: “Due to the successful participation obtained by UNA-Spain in the last five editions of the Casa Asia East-West dialogue, and because of the link that the UNA-Spain (United Nations Association of Spain - http://www.anue.org) creates between their young C’MUN participants and the Dialogue; it is an honour to participate in this year’s edition.”

Before the Meeting we were asked to choose between two groups we would like to participate: “Thinking a New World” and “Thinking a New UN”. I participated in the first one. Firstly, I would like to say that I am agree that we had so wide agenda to discuss, nevertheless, we were proposed to examine the question from 3 angles, 3 fronts, actually. These fronts were economical, political, and social. We also had a list of questions to be discussed and answered by the end of the youth session. Actually, this youth session lasted only 1,5 days and the rest of the time was dedicated to Casa Asia East-West dialogue. We had debates in Barcelona City Hall and participated in the series of round tables what’s speakers and participants were important leaders, professors, specialists and social movement activists and these round tables were: “GOVERNANCE, ECONOMICS AND GLOBALIZATION”, “WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL CHANGE” and the last but not the least - “THE VOICE OF YOUTH. GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES”. Obviously, at the last one we had an opportunity to present our ideas. So, 2 representatives from each committee together with the director of C’MUN, Raül Jiménez, and with Mr. Kiyotaka Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, United Nations, were presenting and discussing our elaborated ideas, proposals and future local acts we will implement in our countries in the nearest future. The participants of the Special Meeting proposed maybe small but real actions in order to change something in our societies, mainly in the heads and hearts of our mates, acquaintance and friends. Mostly, we wanted to invent something that will firstly make a thinking revolution in order to overcome the cognitive crisis and that will activate, I´d rather say, our so inert people and will make them to act. As it was discussed in the Meeting – the democracy is not just going to elections but people’s participating in some spheres of political decision-making process. However in order to be heard we need to speak. The people should express their needs to their government.

What about my personal experience, well, first of all, I really enjoyed the discussion maybe because it was live discussion, it was almost all the time friendly, calm, sincere talk. Actually, we were talking a lot about different problems and their different solutions on the example of each country, practices used and so on. In 2 groups we had representatives from Armenia, China, Mexico, Moldova, Russia, South Korea, Spain, The Philippines and the United Kingdom. So, the groups were rather diverse and we had a lot of things and “states’ top secrets” to share with each other and to discuss.

For mi this experience was very interesting and unique for many reasons. Firstly, for me personally and for other participants, I guess, it broke many stereotypes about different aspects and conditions of live and of governance of other countries, also about other cultures and other people. I knew lots of exciting facts at first hands and I realized one more time the strong, in many cases, destructive influence of mass-media or, as we get used to name it, informational war. Secondly, this very discussion made me understand some simple things: even if we realize that right now we, the youth, could do almost nothing on the global level but, as well-known motto says, we should think globally but act locally (just remember the experience and the contribution into nature improvement of our brave Irina Fedorenko). Thus, I would like to appeal for everybody! All of us need to think not only about youth organizations hard working, organization and implementation of numerous projects but we need to act, to start with simple every-day things: help an old woman to cross the street, think about going to next elections, recycle the garbage in a proper way, participate in subbotnics, plant a tree, be polite with the others, promote good, moral life values among our friends, etc. This is not USSR’s or just socialistic stuff but this teaches us to be good citizens, good people first o all. So, the bigger is the amount of good citizens, the better and the stronger country we have (I also understood it after talking to other countries’ representstives and thinking about their experiences). I’ll say even more: we personally, MUNers, should not only talk about international relations, politics, economics and so on, we should always remember all our MUNRFE values, but here I would like to underline the importance of one of them: civil society building, and right now I’m speaking not only from the point of view about political awareness but about being good civilians, as I’ve mentioned, just being good persons. Start with yourself! As my good friend’s social movement “YOU!” motto says: “Because every positive change in the world starts with YOU!” Moreover, we should accomplish what we promised to do. Activate your positive thinking! Just believe in a better world! Go out of your mental caves and start to act! Stand up, look around and say to yourself: impossible is nothing and I will achieve what I want. We will achieve it together; only remember our famous MUNRFE motto: “We develop the world through developing ourselves and we develop ourselves through developing others”.

 

Forever yours,

Ksenia Severinova.