WorldMUN 2009

Dear Delegates, Faculty Advisers, Alumni and Friends,

It is with great honor and pleasure that I invite you to the 18th session of Harvard World Model United Nations (WorldMUN), which will be held in The Hague, The Netherlands from March 22-27, 2009. We have updated our website, and I encourage you all to register for our conference.

This summer, the Harvard and United Netherlands teams have been industriously making conference plans. Preparations include booking hotels, mapping social events, and doing everything within our power to create the best WorldMUN experience yet. Moreover, we want WorldMUN to be accessible for delegates from all areas of the world and are endeavoring to ensure the lowest costs possible for our participants.

For those of you new to our conference, please read the documents under our ‘Preparation’ tab to help you better understand WorldMUN. We will continue to update the site with documents and information that should help newcomers better grasp all aspects of WorldMUN. If you feel that the material contained within the “Preparations” tab is incomplete, please let us know so we can update that information for the benefit of all delegates.

Please note some of the changes we have made to registration this year. After discussions at last year’s conference, we have decided to bring our delegation cap back up to 20 delegates. We will also maintain our policy of limiting delegations to only one per school. Given the continual growth of WorldMUN, we want to ensure that the conference maintains the diversity we have worked so hard to achieve over the past 17 years.

This year’s conference is also about half a day longer than last year’s and we will be doing registration at-conference on Sunday March 22nd and Opening Ceremonies that evening. This will enable us not only to have more committee time but also introduce exciting events such as the Social Venture Competition that WorldMAP launched last year.

We have also decided to continue the Delegate Fee policy that we instituted last year. Upon registering, we will not only ask you to provide the delegation fee but also 25% of each, individual delegate fee. We are charging this fee to limit the number of early registrant drops, thus allowing us to be more responsive to allowing other delegates to attend. Also, this policy will help us post country assignments earlier, allowing all our delegates more time to prepare for the conference.

A completely new addition to this year’s conference is the Early Registration policy. We are offering the possibility of completing your registration with 100% of all fees paid before November 1st. For all delegations that are set to attend WorldMUN and know their delegate numbers, this is an opportunity to receive priority country assignments. This policy will also enable us to have better projections for conference attendance, be more responsive to those delegates that do attend our conference and post country assignments earlier to allow greater preparation.

Regular delegation registration will conclude on December 15th. If, however, at some point before this date, we become close to meeting our capacity, we will send a follow-up email alerting all delegates of this possibility and encourage you all to register at that time.

If you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We are looking forward to having an exceptional week in The Hague and are always open to new suggestions and advice. Thank you for your interest in WorldMUN, and we look forward to seeing you in The Hague!

Sincerely,
Timur Kalimov
Secretary-General
WorldMUN ‘09