It is always stimulating to meet young people in the vibrant environment of a college and the group of young women that I met at Dar Al-Hekma (DAH) were no exception. They are this year's Officers for the College's Model United Nations Society (MUN). MUN is an authentic simulation of the United Nation General Assembly and other multilateral bodies. Anyone can set one up – a school, college, university or community. This was the opening night of their second DAHMUN Conference and after the formalities were over, I spoke to Dr. Chaman Rahim, their Society Advisor, and to some of the officers. Dr. Rahim is from Bangladesh and was educated in India and France, where she earned a PhD in Town Planning. She speaks, reads and writes six languages: Bengali, Urdu, Hindu, English, French and Arabic. Her young DAHMUN officers therefore have a mentor with a significant international academic and cultural background on whom they can bounce their ideas. “I am the mother hen!” she says with smile, “But I let them do the work. They are very clever and they do it very well. I founded the society three years ago, and now we have 150 members. My vision was to get them politically informed, to know what is going on around the world, to speak in a diplomatic manner and to achieve things through dialogue.” She has been very pro-active in introducing her Officers to the real world of dialogue and diplomacy and during the first year, she took a group of fourteen girls to Switzerland. “We went to the office of the United Nations and visited the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Labor Office (ILO) and the Red Cross. We also had an appointment with the President of Switzlerland in Berne and met her there. The following year we went to Germany and twelve members attended our first real conference at Jacob's University in Bremen. Faiza Rizvi, who is from India, won the award for being the Best Delegate of the whole conference, which made us very proud. We then went on to the Netherlands where we met the Prime Minister.” Faiza Rizvi spoke about her experience of that conference: “There were more than 150 delegates and all the different committees were represented, like the World Health Organisation ((WHO), the ILO, Economic and Social Council, and the WTO. I was representing India in the WTO. We had lots of heated debates and conflicts with other countries, India and Pakistan especially – and then we had some allies who are friends of India, so we had a very interesting discussion. We were given two topics about two weeks ahead of the Conference. You have to be equally prepared for both of them, and then on the day of the conference they choose one topic. We did our research here in Jeddah before we travelled. It was a great experience, but the best part of when we travel is when we talk to students from other cultures. For them, women in Saudi Arabia are just sitting behind their veils: they don't talk, they don't do anything. So they were very surprised to see us and they said “My goodness, you are really from Saudi Arabia?” One student came and asked me: “Do you still travel on camels there in Saudi Arabia?” And then she said: “When you open your taps, does oil come out?” That is what they know about Saudi Arabia! They know nothing about us, so they loved seeing women from Saudi Arabia, taking part in this conference. So we made a mark, in both Germany and Netherlands.” The nine Officers of DAHMUN are a multinational group, being Saudi Arabian, Yemene, Eritrean, Palistinian, Pakistan, India, and Afghani. They come from different levels of the University as well as all studying different majors. They are elected by the students in the College and when standing for election, they have to give a speech to persuade the students that they are right for the job. The ‘Secretary General' of the DAHMUN Society this year is Nadine Mojadidi whose father is Afghani, and mother is Saudi. Prior to taking on this role, she had also travelled with the group to the Netherlands: “I was representing France in the WTO, and it was a great experience. It was quite frightening at the start, but then you get the hang of it. What is nice is that everyone comes from different and diverse groups. In my Committee, we had people coming from Ghana, the Netherlands, and I had three from DAH as well. You really feel that you are all in the UN.” “Yes,” chipped in one of the other Officers, “You are united on the basis of your diversity.” The functions are co-ed, but the girls from DAH had no problems with coping with this. “Most of the girls who travelled come from a co-ed educational background – they have been in co-ed international schools here. The others who haven't been, didn't have any problems mingling with males,” said Nadine. “When you are in University, you are exposed to a lot of events and circumstances where you have to communicate with men, and that mentality where women don't mingle with men is over, really. You are all out in the open,” added one of the other Officers. Nadine continued: “For example, when we had the floods in Jeddah, the girls went to Dar el Harithy, and they were working alongside Saudi guys. But they know the girls have experience of co-ed activities, because education is not only in class. This is something that is taught in DAH; so it wasn't really a cultural shock for the students to be in a co-ed debating conference and environment in Europe because they are prepared for it before.” The hot topic for this year's conference is all about the MENA countries and the revolutions that have been going on over the last few months: “Shifting Sands: A Wave of Change”. __
