THIMUN XXXV 2003

At the 2003 35th annual session, our school was assigned the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is an NGO. This is one of the smallest delegations at THIMUN, a delegation of only 8, but never the less, just as important as some of the others.
Our role at THIMUN was to promote health at all times and to provide health advice and guidance to other delegations. We also, where possible fought to have input on resolutions from the health aspect point of view. We all found how easily the large country delegations neglected direct health issues and we now understand why the UN have such specialised organisations within them.
Our team was chosen despite fierce competition for the places and many hard decisions were made; but finally a Sidcot THIMUN 2003 team emerged. Each individual chosen delegate was then assigned an individual commission in different conferences to represent the WHO. The team was as follows:

General Assembly (GA)                                     Special Conference on Human Rights (SCHR)
Committee 3 - Katie Riley                                    Sub-commission 1 - Michael Winder
Committee 6 - Vicky Gillings                               Sub-commission 2 - Indigo Carnie

Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)        Environment Commission EC)
Theresa Newport                                                  Sub-commission 1 -  Garry Yu
                                                                             Sub-commission 3 -  Matthew Jameson
Disarmament Commission (DC)                       
Sub-commission 1 - Alex Apfel (**head Delegate**)

As the WHO, we were somewhat lucky in our preparation for the upcoming THIMUN conference, as our Head Delegate Alex, has a father who was actually employed in the WHO regional office for Europe. This was somewhat helpful in getting our minds on the right track in thinking as a WHO delegate in real life would as Dr. Apfel gave us a talk on the WHO!
As an NGO, we did not actually have the right to vote upon resolutions and amendments, but being the WHO we did feel important as a lot of other Delegations wanted our approval of their resolution in our signature.
Throughout the week we gained more experience of how the UN works and so we steadily became more confident and played a more influential role in 'swaying' and 'persuading' countries votes as we could not actually vote ourselves, which at sometimes was rather frustrating.
Towards the end of the week, each of us felt that we fulfilled the representational responsibilities for the WHO and achieved a lot in the promotion of health for all in this 'virtual world'. We all thought that this THIMUN week passed far too quickly to believe and everyone alike should have the opportunity to experience this one-time valuable educational experience.
Now, looking back at THIMUN, we all agree that THIMUN has taken a strong influence on how we now lead our lives. We think we are more open to others opinions, better at finding solutions to problems, taking a genuine interest in current real life issues and above all, having a more mature approach to life realising that there is a world out there which is not as simple to run as it actually seems; there are many complex complications which need to be understood before decisions are made. Co-operation and compromisation is required for development and advancement in the human race. We also believe that this is one of the very few youth forums for raising the voices of the youth today, adults of tomorrow.