Before his career with CLEIMUN, Michael Perrins ran a conference with his school, Haileybury, for ten years. Then he realized that European and American Model UN conferences have different styles that he wanted to combine. Perrins created CLEIMUN to marry the concepts to provide a unique experience. He believes that the international component of CLEIMUN adds a real-life perspective for students, although he thinks it is too small. His favorite part of the conference is watching people come into MUN not knowing what's going on and leave having achieved enormous growth. Advice he would give to other leaders is to go for it, get prepared and think laterally.
At a young age, Andreas Payne found an interest in Model UN. During his high school experience at Haileybury, he joined the club and discovered his passion. Still to this day he enjoys seeing the variety of ideas for resolutions and watching those ideas expand in debate. He sees this program as a great way to expose kids to skills that aren’t taught in a regular classroom. Payne acknowledges and commends how Model UN grows confidence, public speaking and research skills, quick thinking, and diplomacy; all things that can only be taught here. He also loves CLEIMUN for the opportunities that were offered to him. As a child in the Model UN community, he was able to travel. Because of MUN, he has been taken to places that he would have never gone before. These experiences have helped broaden his perspectives on the world and helped him to accumulate wisdom. To be a successful delegate, Andreas Payne lives by a simple phrase: fake it till you make it. Even if you don’t always know exactly what you’re doing just have confidence in yourself!