This Saturday Dec. 15 marks a first for the Grand Haven High School Model United Nations team (GHMUN), as they hold their inaugural conference, specifically in the LGI and four pod 1 classrooms, against three local West Michigan teams – Grandville, Spring Lake and West Ottawa.

As the Grand Haven team in years past has packed its schedule with conferences spanning from Brighton, MI to the UN Headquarters in New York City, adviser Jason Klinger and club president, senior Chloe Weigel, took the initiative to create a new conference, hosted at home.

The original framework for the inaugural GHMUN conference began a few years back from a renowned and passionate member of the Model UN team.

“It was Sam Nelson, one of our alums, idea to get a Model UN conference started and it is finally happening this year,” Weigel said. “This has been something we have talked about since my freshman year, as I’ve been in Model UN for four years. I’m just honestly so excited.”

From that initial spark, Weigel helped lay down the foundation for something that many teams competing around the Lakeshore haven’t experienced.

“Before this, there wasn’t a Model UN conference for high schoolers on the west side of the state,” Weigel said. “Most of the teams are on the east side and that means most of us have to travel three hours or so to get to Model UN conferences. With this in place, we can bring Model UN here.

Even before anyone knows how this small-scale conference will play out, Weigel and others are hopeful to make this an annual GHMUN conference for years to come.

“We want to host a conference or something bigger possibly year after year,” Weigel said. “We hope it grows in size each year as well.”