For 29 years, AMUN has been a primary timekeeper in my life, providing a certain rhythm and cadence to my years. For some, the year begins on January 1st and ends on December 31. For others, it’s the fiscal year. For many of you, the academic calendar dictates—you think in terms of semesters and holidays and summer breaks and exam schedules. But for AMUN staffers, our year really runs November to November. As soon as one Conference is done, planning for the next one begins. Then in January, our new Executive Committee meets to plan out the year, in the spring we train our Conference Leadership Team, over Labor Day Weekend, the full staff convenes in Chicago for all-staff training, and then in November — Conference. We move everything out of our storage unit and into the Sheraton. We finish staff training and teambuilding. I can tell when you all start to get to the hotel because my email quiets down and the energy level in the lobby goes up. And on Saturday evening, for the last 13 years, I’ve had the distinct honor of addressing you all as the Executive Director during this Opening Plenary session. 

And it’s a moment that still gets to me, every time — to look out into this crowd of faces, some very familiar, but many new, and I am inspired and proud to know that what brings us here today is the same thing that has brought people to AMUN for thirty-five years. Model UN is a fundamentally optimistic endeavor; it brings people together to talk about, discuss, and creatively solve big, intractable problems on the premise that we can — in fact — do something about them. But AMUN does not provide easy ways out of the messiness of international politics and diplomacy. Here in our simulations, you CAN get stuck, you CAN fail, you CAN reach an impasse. Just as in real life. But I would encourage you to not give up when these things happen. Instead, stay at the negotiating table a little longer. Sit with the other person’s perspective. Try one more time to find common ground or a place to start. 

When I look at the agenda we have this year, I think of all the good work the United Nations does; the areas of everyday life Members States come together to discuss in ways that have real life impacts for the average citizen, where they live. This year the Third Committee will discuss literacy, which touches on the very personal, everyday lives of ordinary citizens. The Economic and Social Council will look at how innovations in science and technology are linked to development, another area where the impacts will be experienced in people’s homes and immediate communities. Decisions in the Second Committee regarding nutrition and food security have the potential to improve the quality, availability and cost of food at local markets. They’re not necessarily the issues that get big splashy headlines, and often the average citizen is not aware of how the work done in rooms like this can effect change in their day-to-day lives. 

But we know that the United Nations and organizations like it — and the diplomats and, yes, the bureaucrats and experts who put in the work day in and day out — play a critical, and often positive, role in the world today. It is the work of months and years and even decades, where progress and wins rarely happen quickly. Earlier today, I looked at the Final Report from 2001 (the earliest one we happen to have online, and the first where I served as Secretary-General at AMUN and found that 23 years ago, before a fair number of you were even born, AMUN representatives were discussing the right to education, food security, and the right of people to self-determination. And that year, of course, the Contemporary Security Council, was concerned with international terrorism as all of us were still taking in and considering the shock and aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Then, if I look at where we were just a decade ago, in 2014, I see a different kind of agenda: one with an expanded committee lineup, new schools attending AMUN, and new simulation formats. But our representatives were seized with many of the same topics swirling in the international relations atmosphere: the prevention of armed conflict; eliminating violence against women; entrepreneurship for development; and humanitarian assistance. The Security Council (in the real world and in AMUN simulations) had continued to meet. The ICJ (again, in the real world, and in AMUN simulations) had continued to issue opinions. Many things had changed, even if many of the rhythms felt familiar. And that is what I see and feel today.

I see the result of a long legacy. Grounded firmly in the past, but with a vision firmly in the distance.  In 1989 AMUN was founded with a core mission: to provide a high-quality, realistic, educational simulation of the United Nations based in the Midwest. Today, at our 35th conference, you are part of that mission, and we are celebrating having more than 30,000 students as participants at AMUN. I think in times like these, where the chaos and the crises in the world around us reach a fever pitch nearly every day, we do good to remember that we are part of communities and traditions and legacies that are larger than ourselves. That we are not alone, and that there is power in the collective. Model UN reminds me of that promise—and it reminds me that institutions, imperfect as they are, will not save us. But other people just might. 

I believe in the transformative power of Model UN, and whether this is your first conference, or your thirty-fifth (or more), I hope that this conference, in particular, will transform you, that you will allow it to change you. Maybe in a small way, but maybe in a big way. Let it change your mind, let it change your perspective, let it open up possibilities. Let it do for you what it has done for me and for so many others.