By Kiara Cain
Youth and Government is a club created to inform participating students about the inner workings of government. It allows them to see the problems in the government and gives them the ability to work together and discuss ways to alleviate these issues.
Every year Youth and Gov participates in two activities called Youth Legislature (LEG) and Model United Nations (MUN) which both take place in Baton Rouge.
MUN is a collaborative event where students represent countries and talk about resolutions to the problems that they face. Usually, before the resolutions are discussed they are written and debated at LEG. However, this year, due to a limited number of students, Shreve did not participate in LEG.
“Youth and Gov gives students a glimpse of how state and federal governments work along with the United Nations,” club sponsor Jason McInnis says. “Youth and Gov helps to give youth a voice in the world around them.”
At MUN, students from Shreve and many other schools are put into three different chambers: General Assembly, Economic/Social, and Security. In these chambers they must decide if the resolutions they have debated can be passed.
Participant and President Teresa Franks has been involved in Youth and Gov since her freshman year.
“I joined the club to get out of the social studies fair and ended up loving MUN, so I’ve continued to go ever since,” Franks states.
This year Franks represented the country Azerbaijan and was on the Security Council. However, her council was not able to pass any resolution this time around.
“It’s hard to get things passed in the Security Council especially with a country involved in this year’s conflicts we were writing resolutions about,” she says. “So unfortunately we didn’t pass anything in our council.”
Students are given the opportunity to learn more about the countries they are representing since they are given the ability to debate and write about things from the country’s viewpoint.
“This is what I love about Youth and Gov,” McInnis says. “It teaches students how to research, look at issues from multiple perspectives, collaborate with others, and make a good argument without it being a fight.”
The members of Youth and Gov encourage those who are interested to join and participate in MUN as it is a great learning experience and allows for students to connect with those from many different schools all over the state.