At MUNA, teams of years 10 and 11 students choose a country to represent and then conduct international debates - just as the real United Nations would. Issues are addressed such as poverty, whaling, AIDS, terrorism and many others and debated at an ‘Assembly’. The process ran over a gruelling day of discussion and debate at Forbes last weekend.

MUNA challenges young people to respect and tolerate differences of race, religion and nationalism while retaining their own individualism and the best of their national traditions.

This year the two Boorowa teams were Terri Bush and Nikita Shean representing Canada, with Daniel Anlezark as the team observer and Skye Ryan and Jessica Eustace represent Zambia with Aaron Douglas as the team observer. The two teams have put many hours of work into the preparation of their presentations, learning much about their ‘adopted’ countries along the way.

Skye Ryan was a late replacement for John Dunn whose cadet commitments made him unable to attend the final debate. Although coming into MUNA late, Skye was excellent in her grasp of the issues and her ability to debate them.

The Boorowa Central School Zambia representatives won the overall regional debate over a huge contingent of other schools in this district. The Zambia delegates also won the Public Speaking component of the debates – an outstanding result as two awards have never before gone to one school.

As part of their prize Skye and Jessica will attend the zone finals in Canberra to be conducted at Parliament House in August. Here they will compete against all other district winners from around Australia.