America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison once stated: “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.” Perhaps no other quote better explains the journey of the Bahria University Model United Nations’ team leaders better who have persevered to create the reputable platform that BUMUN is today.
Back in 2012, when the MUN culture was not very popular at Bahria University, a group of ambitious students decided to defy all odds, test their luck and bring this platform home. As they say, anything that’s worthy is never easy to achieve.
The founders dug the ground and laid the foundations of BUMUN with whatever rusty tools they had. Starting from scratch, they had to look for like-minded people and jump over the biggest hurdle, convincing the University officials to allow the event to happen.
After taking on every possible set back as a challenge, Abdul Majid Awan and his team of rebels — Ambreen, Anas , Husam, Maria, and Yusra — were able to launch the first edition of BUMUN. Since then, every passing year, the family keeps growing, and BUMUN became bigger and better.
With the desire to improve and perfect the dream of organizing the ideal MUN, Labib Chauhan (successor to Abdul Majid Awan) could not simply stay limited within any boundaries, hence BUMUN needed to expand from a 92-delegate initiation to a conference with over 500 delegates in 2016.
The ever growing legacy has turned into a more professional and well-ordered conference. Whereas, most MUNs are often known by their socials, quality debates have always been a priority for the team at BUMUN, thus establishing a reputable status in the MUN circuit of the city.
Honestly, BUMUN has come a long way from 2012 when it first started; from a bunch of kids literally just running around trying to get approvals and attract delegates to where it is today, a proper platform that liberates the youth in a world that confines them. Talk about some serious teamwork guys.
So while each and every one of us so vainly puts up our displays or Instagram posts that are over laden with hashtags saying #bumunday1 #qawalinight #adaytoremember #bestexperience, let’s also take a moment to appreciate those who put in all the effort to ensure that Bahria University is not left behind when it comes to all the glory that comes with attending a MUN. After all these people put in their time, energy, money and efforts into a bleak prospect and turned it into a major success.
Now, at this point, when you’ve heard about BUMUN’s journey, and you must be thinking to ask me that why came the sudden need for a history lesson.
Ideally, I would reply by quoting Virginia Wolff, “I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past,” but that is not the approach I intend to take. After subtly accomplishing the “unintended”, I would like to declare that BUMUN IS BACK!
Over the years BUMUN has successfully turned itself into a well-defined paradigm of excellence. This year will be no different. Having returned with a whole new concept of “Together, peace is reality”, BUMUN aims to make the three day conference as fun, interactive and enjoyable as possible.
It warmly welcomes students with no MUNning experience from all over the city to meet new people and develop public speaking skills.
Like every year, students from all over the city will pour in at Bahria University Karachi Campus to simulate United Nations committees such as the General Assembly and Security Council.
Like all Model UN conferences, BUMUN 2018 is designed to teach students about international politics, the United Nations, arbitration, negotiation and conflict resolution.
At the three-day conference, students will gain an understanding of international issues and events, as well as insight into the United Nations and international diplomacy.
The new BUMUN team, which struggles with concepts such as urgency, has been working tirelessly to meet this year’s expectations. From running around the city, making arrangements to staying in late to see them through, the team is all geared up to deliver an exceptional MUN this spring.
BUMUN’18 will be big and unique with 8 committees simulated, the countries represented, a fair topic on the agenda, and the delegates in attendance.
Conflict resolution being the key feature of BUMUN, I would like to clear that Thomas Edison was referring to perseverance when he said stick-to-itiveness, but most of you won’t know that since you stopped somewhere around “back in 2012”.
Similarly, during the painstakingly long, tedious speeches and ceremonies, delegates and team members sit through, pondering more often than not, “uff tauba, such long speeches”, undermining the colossal amount of hard-work that was put in order to ensure that Bahria has its own prestigious and recognizable MUN. So the next time one of the cofounders or president go a little over board with their speeches, put aside your phones (only after you’re done reading this blog) and instead of yawning or having a glazed expression, listen, appreciate, clap, hell even give a standing ovation.
So to those who are reading this, skimming through this and especially those who jumped to the end like our generation jumps to conclusions, I invite you all to Bahria University Karachi Campus on 2nd-4th March 2018. If you’re lucky, you might be inspired to become ambitious too. 8 committees, 3 social events, 1 BUMUN’18; register for the conference and bring the change you wish to see.
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