By Mpho Mathaba “I would like to give special appreciation to Soofia International School for being the only school to come all the way out of Maseru district and join this debate”, these were the words of Mr Percy Mangoela of Rotary Club. Mr Mangoela was speaking at the Model United Nations(MUN) debate competition held at Machabeng College in Maseru on Friday the 24th October 2019. The competition which was sponsored by United Nations Lesotho had its agenda as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) or the UN vision 2030 with the main topic being accelerating the implementation of the 17 SDGs, quite a great issue to tackle.
There were five schools present and each school had two teams of five delegates, each team representing a country that was selected in a previous learning conference. One team from Soofia International School was representing Argentina and the other one was representing Canada. Leaving the other eight countries( South Korea, South Africa, Russia, Italy, Lesotho, Kenya, Mexico and India) to the other debating schools which were National University of Lesotho, Limkwokwing University of Creative Technology as local universities,Machabeng College(the host) and Cenez High School as one other high school participant. This was Soofia’s first time being involved in such a model of debate but the delegates managed to get the concept within the limited time they had. The ten delegates also managed to adjust to the changes in the debate format which they were faced with on the final day. The competition truly was interesting but a very difficult one but Soofia managed to scoop a silver award for best delegation, quite an achievement. The delegates truly did an amazing job as well as their coaches who were able to train them in a new model of debate after having been used to another different one. The debate team of Soofia International School is definitely looking forward to engaging in more of such fruitful debates or delegations in future.