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First Place Mountains Beyond Mountains Essay Winner

Essay by Julia Calagiovanni

“Motion to adjourn for today’s guest speaker.”

      Placards – “Pakistan,” “Canada,” “Brazil” – are raised into the air. The vote is nearly unanimous.

      “This motion passes.”

      It was a January morning. I, along with hundreds of other high-schoolers, was participating in a Model United Nations conference. My committee of sixty people had spent hours discussing educational options for refugees. Delegate after delegate had stepped to the podium and delivered a jumble of jargon. It was just another item on the agenda, another topic to research.

      Now, we leaned back in our chairs, sipped our expensive coffee, and fidgeted with our pens. Our guest speaker was a local woman who works with former refugees settling in the Syracuse area. Refugees who are able to move permanently to another country are fortunate. Many others live indefinitely in camps. This woman had visited camps that are crowded and disorganized; disease and malnutrition are common. Food, water, and shelter are, of course, important concerns. But education can give refugees something they need just as badly: hope.

      I returned to committee that afternoon with an entirely new perspective. This was not about who would pass their resolutions and win an award for “Outstanding Delegate.” This wasn’t about personal success at all. This was about a group of refugee children kneeling in the dirt of a makeshift school. They learned their alphabet. They learned to read and write. They learned to advocate for themselves and their families. They returned to their former homeland to help create a peaceful society there. They worked to eliminate the prejudice, violence, or other obstacles that had forced them to leave.

      That is my dream. But to take action, I must be able to share it with others. I must speak clearly and think quickly. I must defend my stance but compromise when appropriate. I must remember that tact and diplomacy are essential for gaining the respect of others. I must never forget the goals I am working toward. I must reconsider my own biases and opinions and be willing to take a chance on unconventional new ideas.

      Model United Nations challenges me to do this. But it is, of course, just a simulation. When the conference was over, my fellow delegates and I boarded buses and returned to school. But the image of those children – and thousands like them across the world - lingered in my mind. Why shouldn’t every child, everywhere, learn to read and write? Why should he go to bed hungry? Why should she ever feel inferior because of race, religion, or gender? I understand that I can’t help everyone; I can’t do everything. But I can do something, and it is far more important that I dare to begin. Haiti, Russia, Peru, and Rwanda were waiting for someone like Paul Farmer. Someone, somewhere, is waiting for someone like me to speak up. 

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