Introducing Joanne



Hi everyone! My name is Joanne Qi and I am one of the vice chairs for the NGO Forum. I'm so excited to meet everyone in committee this March, and I hope you are all ready for an exciting and enlightening debate.

I am a sophomore electrical engineering and computer science major, with a minor in art history. I am from Redondo Beach, California, but was originally born in Singapore. I have been debating since freshman year of high school. In fact, coming to BMUN in sophomore year of high school was a big influential factor in me coming to Cal. Model UN has absolutely changed my life, and I love that I can continue being a part of the community in college. Outside of MUN, I like to draw, read comics, watch movies, and visit national parks.

NGO Forum is going to be a very unique debate experience. Since the time is split between visiting different committees and substantive debate, I promise there will never be a dull moment! I hope that what you learn from the first half of debate about the challenges that NGOs face will help you contribute to the conversation in other committees.

If you have any questions about debate (or engineering, or computer science, or life) feel free to contact me at jqi@bmun.org.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Russia's NGO Suppression

Image
The suppression of NGO activity is not a novel concept. There are multiple ways that this can occur, from requiring the NGO's funds be kept in a government bank to making the act of registering NGO's extremely difficult. Russia in particular has control of NGO funds - as the president of the country, Putin, claims, "Not a single state that respects itself [allows overseas funding of NGO's], and we won’t allow it either". There are a few possible explanations for Russia's political opposition to NGO's. First off, Russia's government has authoritarian traits, often covertly carrying out brazen attacks on unfriendly politicians (Boris Nemstov, an unlucky opposition leader and critic of Putin, died after getting shot near the Red Square, one of the Federation's largest and busiest tourist attractions - while the killers haven't been caught, the investigation is personally being handled by the Russian government. It doesn't take a genius to add
Read more

Example of a Letter to the UN

Here's an example of a letter to the UN. Link Full text below!  I write to you in my capacity as President of the Council of Ministers of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), and submit herewith the conclusions of the ninth Special Meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Organization on the situation in Guinea-Bissau, held today in Lisbon, I must recall the special interest of the Community in this issue, as Guinea-Bissau is one of its members, and as such, CPLP maintains an inclusive approach and reiterates its total availability and interest in being part of the solution to the crisis in Guinea-Bissau, in close cooperation with the United Nations, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as you will be able to verify in the conclusions below.  The international community strongly condemned the coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau from the very beginning, demanding the restoration of the constitutional order and th
Read more

Clarifications and more!

Hello NGOs! I hope all you're doing to prepare for conference is going well. I've received a couple of similar questions over email and I wanted to answer them here so everyone will be on the same page: Power-points during individual committee presentations - While this is not required, you have the option of doing so, and it will not help or hurt any evaluation of your presentations. However, please note that they should be short; going over 5 minutes will not be possible, and you should have plenty to talk about regarding your NGO, its abilities, and its relation to   the topic. If you so choose to make a powerpoint presentation, have it ready by the first committee session and email it to me (ksingh@bmun.org) For those of you who have not turned in position papers yet, please note that the deadline to turn in papers and still be eligible for any committee award is February 12th. We look forward to reading them! If you feel strongly about wanting to present during th
Read more