Over 2 days 7 students attended the Model EU at the University of Otago with students from Waitaki Boys’ and 10 other schools from around Otago.

The event was focused on learning how the European Union works. To do this, we were all assigned a country, and acting as our country we debated on a directive. This directive included laws and policies, focused on the topics of disinformation, misinformation, freedom of speech and freedom of the media. We debated whether these were policies we wanted to implement in the EU or not. The two councils, foreign and general affairs, debated on their own sub-directives and at the end came together to debate the directive as a whole. We learnt so much about foreign affairs, general affairs, the EU, and the topics we were discussing. We were all engaged and fascinated the whole time. We were also extremely fortunate to have highly qualified people in the field of international relations speak to us about their jobs, and how they contribute to either the EU or one of the topics this event was based around. Such as the keynote speaker Kevin O' Connell who formerly worked at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, and is now a Political Counsellor and Deputy Head of Delegation at the EU Delegation to New Zealand. We all came back from this event having gone out of our comfort zones, having learnt so much new knowledge on the EU and a wide range of other topics, and we know this will benefit us in all aspects of our future!

Thanks to the parents who transported and supported us.