If you stopped by out of curiosity, Welcome! And if you’re reading this, seeking that one nudge to further propel you into the next important phase of your life, Welcome, too! The global community today is equipped with diverse opportunities, profound ideas, game-changing innovations and its accompanying challenges including climate change.

A critical element of this community and the future is the youth whose ideas, potentials and capabilities we cannot afford to stifle. Simply put, you cannot use a man of yesterday to sharpen next tomorrow without carrying along the man of today. In other words, to plan the future, the youths have to be engaged and further empowered. It is in realisation of this that Babcock International Model United Nations (BIMUN) provides a platform for the voices of youths to be heard, while sharpening, training and equipping them with the necessary tools of teamwork, effective leadership and diplomacy.

The selected theme for this year’s BIMUN Conference is A Watershed Moment: Transformative Solutions to Interlocking Challenges. As delegates are assigned a committee, a country, and a topic, wherein they must represent the specific interests of their assigned state, this would be a great opportunity to cross-fertilise your ideas and bench-mark your thoughts. You can go far if you are alone, but you can go very far if you are a team. Given the current global pandemic, public health can be better achieved when all hands are on deck- including students and professionals- to build sustainable infrastructure that is people-centered for the betterment of the health of everyone. It is important you know that public health cannot and will not achieve anything if the people are not part of the process of ensuring that the health of an individual is as important as the health of everyone.

Finally, now, more than ever, Africa must recognise her relevant role in contributing to global resilience. A resilient Africa is an Africa that has the concerns of her tomorrow (young people), and this ‘tomorrow’ can only become better if well equipped for the future. Therefore, be it climate change, public health, or respect for human rights, when the potential and creativity of young people are not properly harnessed, then tomorrow becomes a functional society in silos. But when these potentials are harnessed, we have a holistic and functional society aided by cross-collaboration. I look forward to meeting you at the BIMUN23 Conference.

Dr Jonathan Dangana
Faculty Advisor, BIMUN