10/28/05
Youth Visits the UN
GMS Middle School students represent the U.S. at the China Mission .

Story by MS Student PR Staff Writer: Jennifer Tolin

In the end of October, eight students and three chaperones went to New York City for the Youth Visits the UN program, created by Dr. Ruth Selman. The students who went were Mara Goldberg, Brittany Hobson, Katie Todd, Jennifer Tolin, Francis Wong, Andrew Shields, Ethan Coates and Richard Stafford; the chaperones were Nancy Hofer, Jon McLean and Claudia Stafford.

We flew to New York on Sunday the 23rd and that night we attended a meeting about the Millennium Campaign. The Campaign is a program that hopes to end poverty by 2015 with eight goals. Some of the goals are getting all children through primary school; promote gender equality and six others. Another main goal is to get the rich countries of the world to donate a percent of their profit to the poorer countries.

One person who spoke to us on Monday was from the Rainforest Alliance. She told us about what major companies, like Chiquita and Gibson Guitars, are doing to protect the environment. Chiquita has to reuse or recycle 80% of their bags to cover the bananas and many other companies are certified by the Alliance.

Another person spoke about the Adopt- A-Minefield program. Did you know that there are still land mines from World War 1, and that as time goes on, land mines grow stronger? In Europe, there are still many land mines from the World Wars and they injure people everyday. A lot of companies that make land mines manufacture them to look like Game Boys and yo-yos.

On Tuesday the 25th, we went to the China Mission. We talked with two people who worked there for the first part, then one of the delegates’ daughters came to talk to us about China. She was about 14 and she was in 9th grade. To succeed in Chinese schools, you had to be well rounded and you had to attend lectures outside of school.

On Wednesday, we toured the UN.

On our night off, we decided to go to Chinatown to get real Chinese food. We went to the restaurant, and everyone ordered at least one thing, because we thought that the dishes were serving size, but all of the dishes were to share! There was so much more to tell about our trip, that it wouldn’t fit in this article, we had a great time, and I think most of us would go back.

Story by MS Student PR Staff Writer: Jennifer Tolin

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