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Issue 57 – October 2016 – QUEEN MARGARET CALLING
The Year 12 student joined young people from
around the globe for the conference, which was held
in both Washington DC and New York City.
The purpose of the ten-day Envision conference was
to motivate secondary students to gain a new global
perspective by exploring cultural differences, learning
about global issues and experiencing the challenges of
international diplomacy first-hand.
On arrival, the students were divided into groups
and were instructed to research a specific country and
its motives in world events.
“Then we had a mock Security Council summit
where we were given a situation, wrote out our
proposal as a country group and then debated our
resolutions with the other countries,” Caroline says.
Caroline’s country group (China) then spent several
days preparing for a United Nations simulation with a
final summit held in the United Nations building.
“We put forward eight resolutions and managed to
pass all of them, with some amendments,” she says.
Each group was taken to an embassy during the
conference to find out more about different countries.
“I went to the Slovenian Embassy and I found it
really interesting because I did not know anything
about Slovenia prior to my visit,” Caroline says.
The young leaders also heard from speakers on a
variety of global topics, including environment, public
health, diplomacy and science.
A spokeswoman from the World Bank, Angelica
Silvero spoke to the students about what the World
Bank does and economics in the developing world.
“She was incredibly interesting and I left her
presentation feeling hopeful and inspired by all the
progress we have made fighting poverty in the last few
decades.”
Caroline says one of the most inspiring speakers was
Mary Fisher.
“She gained political power at a time when it was
even more difficult than today for women to do so,
and she has spent her life working for equality for all
people,” Caroline explains.
“In 1991, she divorced her husband before finding
out that he had infected her with HIV at a time in
which it was not only a death sentence, but the most
shameful death sentence imaginable.”
“She went on to champion AIDS activism, raising
awareness in Africa and distributing life-saving
medication. She has survived HIV, deadly infections
and breast cancer and to me she was one of the
strongest and kindest people I have ever met.”
A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Future leader Caroline Kay was selected to attend the Global Young Leaders
Conference this year.
As part of the conference, Caroline also visited
famous landmarks, including the Washington
Monument, Pentagon City, Dupont Circle, the White
House, the Holocaust Museum, Times Square, the
Rockefeller Centre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the Statue of Liberty.
For Caroline, the highlight of the experience was
meeting people from such a wide variety of cultures
and countries.
“It was incredible to talk to people from all over the
world about our homes and to truly see the issues we
were discussing from a global perspective,” Caroline
says.
“A girl born in Palestine told us what it was really
like to live there, a German boy with family in Estonia
spoke about their fear of being invaded by Russia and
people from Lebanon and Jordan told us about how
the instability around them affected their lives.”
“The whole experience opened my eyes to areas of
the world I had never thought about before.”
INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY: Caroline Kay took part
in a mock United Nations simulation.
GLOBAL CONFERENCE: Caroline Kay and her group
visited famous landmarks, including the White House.