<p>Oh, wow, I've been in MUN since the middle of 9th grade and it has taken over my life. :) Seriously, I actually have kids referring to me as the "crazy MUN chick"!</p>
<p>Anyway, MUN was already running at my school before I joined, but this year I was one of the three key players in organising and holding our own (completely student-organised) conference. All the teachers did was sign a few order forms because we had to buy placards. It went amazingly! During the months leading up to it, our conference was the bane of my life, but all of the hard work paid off when I saw our freshmen and kids from other schools making great speeches and resolutions. I was so proud of the kids, some of whom I actually taught MUN to!</p>
<p>Tips:
MUN at my school is a club, while at other schools, it's a class. I think yours will be a club too? We have meetings once a week for an hour, and it's basically "learn by doing". We write resolutions on topics from past conferences prior to the meeting and we debate them during the hour. This gives us chairing and delegate practice. When we have an upcoming conference we'll run our resolutions "through the gauntlet", to see if they are "good enough" for the conference. We've found that this method works. </p>
<p>You could start by getting hold of the rules of procedure for a conference. Our school uses THIMUN (The Hague International MUN conference) rules, if you'd like to start with them, I'll be glad to email you a copy. The THIMUN rules are more of a guideline for us, we modify them to suit the nature of the conference. Once you have the rules, you have to familiarise yourself with debate procedures (I can also help there)! I can't really suggest anything else apart from practising: writing and giving speeches, writing resolutions and just practising debating.</p>
<p>When you get your assignments, you will get a country (or a few countries, depending on the size of the conference) and a list of committees and their topics. You will choose your committee based on the topics and then you should research your country, its policies, and the topics. After this, you should write an opening speech/policy statement and then draft a resolution (which will contain action to address the issue, based on your country's policy. for example, Burkina Faso would NOT be for a resolution that includes equal financial input from all member states). Your draft resolution doesn't have to be perfect, just three clauses will do, because you will be working with other people and their resolutions at the conference. Are you with me so far? If you are confused and have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, I'm probably moving too fast. PM me. :)</p>