MUN all over again

I love MUN. It was one of my favorite activities in high school, it was one of my favorite things to help with after high school, and it has been one of my favorite things that I've worked on in Albania. When I found out that Albania had an MUN program that PC was a partner on, I was the first to sign up. After the MUN last year, I was asked to help organize some things for this year's conference. When Dylan arrived, he showed interest in working with the Peshkopi team, since he had experience doing Model Arab League in college. This worked out great for the both of us- he would be the main person on the team and I would spend most of my time working with the steering committee actually planning the conference and all of the things that led up to it like teacher training.

I knew that organizing a big event like this would be a challenge, but I'm not sure that I really anticipated how much of a challenge it would be. First, since I live 5 hours away in Peshkopi, I was not actually present for the steering committee meetings and mostly only communicated by e-mail and phone with the program director. In a face-to-face, sit-down-and-talk-about-it over-coffee culture like Albania this made things difficult. Second, I think I under estimated the bureaucratic hoop jumping that takes place to get a conference like this organized, especially working with an organization like the UNDP. The project was funded jointly by the UN and the American Embassy, but the UN can't disperse funds so a local partner NGO was needed to help with the actual management of the conference. Unfortunately, the process for finding and accepting a partner NGO took a long time (way too long) and so everything was delayed. We started the process in October with the planning of the training of teachers (TOT) but we didn't have a partner until February and therefore we didn't get money out to teams until that point. This delayed everything and meant that teachers and volunteers were paying out of pocket for things like copies and internet time for no reason (the money was there, we just couldn't get to it). When they finally did get the partner on board, everything had to be rushed and when you start with a mad dash and scramble and everything being late, there is good indications that things will continue in that way. To be honest, Mjaft! (the Albanian NGO that became the partner- means Enough!) did a mostly good job once they were in place and I don't envy the amount of scrambling at the end that they had to do to get everything done, but I can see that the whole process would have been about 700% times smoother if they had been able to start working with us in October or November instead of February. As it was we had to postpone one of the mini-conferences (regional meetings with 3-5 schools to practice before the big event) because the money hadn't been transferred yet and the teams couldn't afford to travel. My major stress over the past few months has been my sort of helplessness about the whole thing- as I was the one that the PCVs were most regularly talking to about issues they would talk to me (or complain to me) a lot about things like money or lack of information but unfortunately I had no control over these things and usually unable to help except to hassle other people higher up.

Somehow though, it did seem to mostly come together in the end, even if things were a bit crazed. The thing is really that that is usually how it works here (and sometimes in America too), things are rushed, thrown together and put to the last minute, but it works out. Mostly, I am really proud of the students. This year I got to know a lot more of the students as I had met them all at the mini-conferences and had a more direct relationship with many of them (read: they came to me for help with things because I looked like I might be somewhat in charge). This is great because these kids are truly the future of Albania and now since I'm friends with all of them on facebook, I'll know when one of them gets elected to Parliament or becomes the Ambassador to Egypt.

My work with this project isn't completely done yet. With a firm belief that we don't need to reinvent the wheel every year, I am going to work in the next few months to put together a resource kit and handbook for running the MUN. I hope that the MUN will continue for many years to come and I am sure that with such devoted and motivated teachers, students and PCVs it will just keep getting better.
Me and Dylan with the Peshkopi team and the Egyptian Ambassador to Albania