One delegation from Prince Albert received the Rais Khan Award for the most diplomatic delegation. (Submitted photo/Rémi Joncas)

By Nick Nielsen

High honours

St. Mary’s model UN returns from Winnipeg with prestigious award

May 8, 2025 | 3:06 PM

Looking at the news around the world and how countries negotiate with each other can be a daunting task for most adults, but students from St. Mary’s School jumped at the chance to learn about that process. The school sent three delegations to the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg to take part in the Rotary Club Model United Nations Assembly, and one of those delegations came away with a prestigious award.

For teacher Rémi Joncas, he’s proud to see the way his students took the initiative to research their countries on their own and the preparation they took into the assembly.

“They were well prepared, and we worked very hard to get here. It’s part of years and years and years of buildup for a program in Prince Albert. Model UN’s been one of our really strong areas for the school for years, we did very well in the city most of the time. We get a lot of awards and all the stuff, but it’s the first time ever that we get an award from Winnipeg. That was a dream we had for years to win one of the major awards from Winnipeg.”

The assembly puts students in pairs to represent a country, and the students from St. Mary’s were given the countries of New Zealand, Bolivia, and Bangladesh. From there, each country had to tackle two issues; one student would handle their country’s stance on a controversial farming issue with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), while the other student would work with other countries to decide the best course of action for homing refugees.

With such diverse countries to represent and heavy issues to talk about, Joncas was impressed with how his students handled these topics that have real world consequences. It gave the students a chance to understand how issues that affect people Prince Albert in one way, might affect places around the world differently.

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“It’s an amazing experience because it gets them to understand how the world works. A lot of people are centered very locally, we think locally and that’s okay. But, we also have to think globally because every aspect of this world affects us in Prince Albert and in the world. So when we are looking around here, like even farming, how GMOs might affect farmers. When I was looking at some of the resolutions being discussed, I would see people react if that would be actually passed in the real world.”

The award-winning delegation from Prince Albert was the team of Esther Akinjobi and Umer Hashim representing the country of New Zealand. They were awarded the Rais Khan Award for the most diplomatic delegation.

Akinjobi handled the duties for the GMO resolution for the delegation, and while she didn’t know much about New Zealand before taking part in the model UN, she learned a lot. She was surprised to see just how long it can take to come to a consensus when every country has small changes that they want accounted for.

“I learned that it’s a very long process and not everybody agrees, and a lot of people like their ideas to be heard over other people’s ideas, and people were representing their countries well. I guess because some people don’t agree with what you want to say, some people don’t align with what you want to do, so you have to try debate it out, make sure you reach a consensus, and find something that’s going to make everybody happy.”

On the other side of things, Hashim handled the debates around housing refugees and the immigration crisis. Similarly he was surprised at how long debates can take over small details, but he was impressed with the solution they were able to come to over such a serious topic.

“Every single country has something different to say about it. So reaching consensus is one of the biggest things and one of the longest things. It takes the longest amount of time, and it was very, very impressive how every delegation was just putting it. They’re all into making sure their country got heard over everyone else. It was really, really an interesting experience.”

The Bolivian delegation was represented by Sarah Mansor on the GMO front, and Rija Mansor on the refugees side. Rija shared that while first world countries had more room to speak in this space, she didn’t have much difficulty in having the Bolivian voices getting heard.

“I thought it would be difficult, but surprisingly it was really easy because Bolivia has a high refugee count in terms of Venezuelan refugees and other South American refugees. So it was really easy for us to speak out from that matter and we were all divided into subgroups. So I was able to speak fairly enough in my group, and so we all built resolutions together. Then we completed those, then we sent them to a Google Drive that we all made, and then we needed to get approval from there. So it was pretty easy.”

Sarah added, “I made lots of good friendships over there in CMU and Winnipeg, and then we’re all from different places. So we are all keeping in touch and it’s really nice. It was a really good experience.”

The students from the Bangladesh delegation were not available for an interview, but Jannie Kemp shared a statement with the newsroom.

“The event was a lot of fun, I had a great time meeting people and debating relevant issues in the world today. All the Prince Albert teams crushed it at the assembly, and showed everyone who didnt take us seriously at the event that we’re a force to be reckoned with.”

Also, the team from Shellbrook was the only other team to receive an award. They earned the Bert Friesen Award for most prepared delegation

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com