Habitat Build - March 17th

For this build, we went to a house in dehiwela to cement the floors of the families newly built house. Most of the house was built and the floors were the last thing to be done. although it may sound easy, cementing involves much carrying, shoveling and mixing.

The first step is to collect the sand and mix it up with the cement using shovels. The ratio is about 18 buckets of sand to one bag of cement. a bucket here really means a sort of tray in which stuff is carried about. The technique used to mix them efficiently is to shovel underneath the pile and the turn it over on the same spot until it reaches the sand and cement becomes sort of dark gray color. Afterwards the mixture is arranged in a sort of crater shape in which gravel and water is put. the last time i worked with cement, it was for walls and only water was added, but this time we had to mix about 15 buckets of gravel in with the cement.once the water was added the same technique was used to mix up the gravel and cement/sand, however it is much harder with the gravel present. The mixed cement was then carried into the house where it was laid down by 2 workers. This was a new skill which i learnt through this experience

It was extremely hard work and what made it worse was the extreme heat that we had to work in. it was not the shoveling that was the most difficult task, but carrying the sand, gravel and mixed cement to where it was needed, and the cement mixture really is rather heavy. Despite being exhausted, i still tried to carry as much cement as I could and i think this showed perseverance and commitment. However, halfway through, we decided to abandon our old strategy in which anyone did whatever job was available, and took an assembly line approach. 2 people would shovel and the other three would pass the buckets to each other. this method turned out to be much more efficient and much less strenuous. and is an example of when i worked collaboratively with others. in the end we had made enough cement for 2 rooms.
Overall, i think that the goal we were striving towards when building the house, was the problem of poverty, which in my opinion is an issue of global importance.

COMUN 2012 - 2nd - 4th March

The 2 conference topics for Ecosoc, in which i was the delegate of Japan were: The risks of nuclear energy to environmentally sustainable development, and The sustainable usage of resources in the developing and developed world.

The committee i was in - the UN economic and social council, discusses and coordinates financial and social work through UN agencies. since the theme for this COMUN was energy, the topics were chosen to reflect this.ecosoc has 51 members, and so is reasonably smaller than the general assemblies which have around 180, but is bigger than the security council which has 17. ecosocs mandate falls only with economic issues and delegates cannot call on the military as in the security council, and cannot focus on other issues like human rights or demilitarization.

on the first day which was at school, the topic to be discussed was the issue of nuclear power. After the fukushima daichi nuclear plant accident, japan has become very anti-nuclear, and so my stance in the debate would be to move against the building of nuclear plants. To start with, the floor was opened for speeches, and it became very obvious that most of the house was pro-nuclear. therefore i tried to make my speeches less anti-nuclear but more pro-renewable, however the arguments against this were that nuclear produced much more power that renewable sources. So in retaliation i had to make clear the dangers and risks of nuclear power. during the moderated caucusing - which is essentially a debate within a debate - many solutions were brought up to make nuclear safer, as well as concerns about whether we can actually make it safe,  whether uranium will last us into the future and the issue of radioactive waste. during the practice debates one of my arguments against using nuclear was its extremely high cost and how it was unrealistic for LIC's to use it, but since the topic was about environmentally sustainable development, its viability for developing countries really didn't come into effect. afterwards the house moved into un-moderated caucusing in which resolutions for the topic were drafted. the house split into three groups - 2 pro-nuclear groups and 1 anti-nuclear group of which i was the main sponsor. with few anti-nuclear countries in ecosoc i tried to convince the poor countries, with no real nuclear agendas to join my resolution, however my group was still significantly smaller than the other 2. Therefore i would have to make my resolution less anti-nuclear than i wanted so that countries in the other groups might vote for it. rather than forcing countries to stop nuclear expansion, the resolution stressed shifting the emphasis onto renewable and also included clauses encouraging research into nuclear safety. after the resolutions were typed up the house moved into debate about my resolution, and although it didn't have that many flaws, and could have been a viable resolution - it was still too anti-nuclear for most countries to vote for it and so it failed. the second resolution discussed was sponsored by the delegate of china.