A Centre Wellington District High School student was given a truly unique opportunity this summer.
Sixteen-year-old Emma Nankivell of Elora recently took part in the Global Young Leaders Conference in the United States.
“Somebody nominated me in my school, like a teacher nominated me, I’m not sure who because they don’t tell you exactly who and my teacher never told me,” Nankivell said.
The teen spent 10 days in Washington, D.C. and New York City working towards a Global Summit simulation at the United Nations headquarters.
“Join other high school students from around the country and world for this extraordinary opportunity to learn from and interact with subject matter experts, gain invaluable hands-on experience, and be empowered to fully realize the power of your potential,” the conference website says.
While Nankivell said she hadn’t had any involvement with the United Nations before she is really interested in the organization.
“I want to work there when I’m older,” she said.
“I kind of want to be a human rights lawyer or something similar to that or anything in the UN because there’s so much stuff.”
She is also considering going into business for post-secondary studies.
“You have more opportunities to go places I guess,” she said.
“Like go literally to different places like countries and stuff like that and a lot of people in the program want to be entrepreneurs right because they want to start their own thing and inspire other people.”
The adventure began on July 17 when Nankivell arrived in Washington, D.C. The 300 high school participants from around the world were broken up into various country groups that did not match their home country.
Nankivell was put in the Indonesia group which meant when she was working through the various simulations throughout the 10 days she had to look at every issue from the Indonesian perspective rather than the Canadian perspective and make decisions based on Indonesia’s position.
“At first everyone was really confused why they had another country because everyone was like ‘I want to represent my country’ but then everyone got into the role and it was really cool,” she said.
While the group did take sightseeing excursions Nankivell said they also attended lectures from industry experts, participated in simulations leading up to the Global Summit as their country group and visited an embassy in Washington.
With only 10 days Nankivell said she worked very quickly.
“One of the biggest things I took away from this was confidence because I didn’t know I could make that much high quality product from a rushed environment,” she said.
For the Global Summit simulation Nankivell was chosen to speak on behalf of the peace and security commission about the terrorism/counter terrorism resolution her team had drafted and passed.
“People would vote for me and stuff and I thought that was really inspiring, I was like ‘wow they really care about what I’m saying,’” she said.
The summit took place in a conference room at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
“On the mic what happens is that everybody has an earpiece to hook over their ear so when you talk into the mic it goes to every single person’s ear,” she explained.
“So it’s not like a mic, everyone can hear it perfectly.”
The summit simulation was run entirely by students in the program.
“I love this program because the advisors didn’t do anything,” Nankivell said.
“They just showed the leadership people that got elected how to do everything and we ran everything by ourselves.
“Like we were literally running a Global Summit Conference at the UN … by ourselves.”
In addition to learning how to think on her feet and present a convincing argument, Nankivell said she made new friends from around the world.
“It’s not like I went travelling all over the world, it’s like the world came to me,” she said.
