ALTMUN is a new High School Model United Nations Conference. Our conference debut will be in November of 2022. We would like to share a bit of our story and plans for the future. ALTMUN is the name of our conference but is also a group of dedicated volunteer Model UN Alumni. MUN has made an impact on each of us; we see the value it can have for developing youth. Our goal is to give back and provide that opportunity for others. Our name is inspired by a latin phrase altiora peto which means “to seek higher things”. We want to offer a high quality conference that offers leadership opportunities for high school students. Our name can also stand for an “alternative” MUN experience, because we wish to offer something different than the college-led HS conferences. We have a three year plan to get ourselves to that goal.
Year One, 2022
This first year, while we do have a small high school staff, they are mostly partnered with older MUN Alumni who will be the Chairs of the committees. This pairing was created to offer mentorship to our novice high school students. While they have not been on any MUN Staff previously they all have the passion to bring this conference to fruition. Our high school staff, in the position of Vice Chair, come from various schools within the East Tennessee area. This year those schools are Signal Mountain, McCallie, GPS, CCA, Baylor and Farragut. This year there will be no delegate fee, we are starting out small and want to be accessible to the surrounding communities. The only fees we will have this year are Delegation Fees of $65 each. We hope these fees will be enough to cover our costs this year. If the funds are insufficient, we plan to use crowdfunding to help us cover those fees on a donation basis. Registration will begin mid August through the conference management system MUN Manager. We have seven committees which are listed on our website altmun.org. We will likely have a delegate cap of 300. The conference will be hosted in-person in Chattanooga, Tennessee on November 19th, 20th and 21st. We are pairing with Chattanooga State Community College this year not only for our venue but for administrative support.
Year Two, 2023
We plan to hold staff applications for this year at the 2022 conference. If there is enough student interest we plan to move to a structure in which the high schoolers hold Chair positions. We also hope to have some internal high school leadership such as a Secretariat. If there are not enough students to fill out this structure we will continue to provide support with alumni volunteers. We will hope to offer the same number of committees with a similar delegate cap. By 2023 we hope to achieve non-profit status, and branch away from outside support if possible. At this point we will reevaluate our ability to offer an additional year without delegate fees. However we do plan to institute individual delegate fees long term.
Year Three, 2024
Again we plan to hold staff applications for 2024 at the 2023 conference. If in 2023, we were unable to have a high school secretariat it will be a goal of ours to recruit for these roles. We would like to have a full high school staff by 2024. By this year we will institute an individual delegate fee. Depending on the delegate attendance, we may consider offering additional committees and or a larger delegate cap. If possible by 2024, we would like to expand our program to include a middle school conference. Additionally, if resources permit, we would like to take a small group of delegates to the NHSMUN Conference in New York.