Student takes a seat in the UN

(Photos contributed) Sarah Gengler, left, poses in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York before heading inside to the General Assembly room, pictured above. Gengler served as a delegate for the Model United Nations, a program that puts students in the position of international UN delegates. [Click to enlarge]

Along with students from around the world, Sarah Gengler filed into the United Nations' General Assembly Hall -- the meeting place of nations -- and took her seat.

Her place card read: United Arab Emirates.

The Gehlen Catholic School alum isn't a United Nations (UN) delegate, at least not yet, and she's not from the United Arab Emirates, but she did serve on her university's National Model UN delegation.

The National Model UN is a program that gives students a chance to experience the work of the United Nations first hand, culminating in a conference at the UN headquarters in New York.

Like other participants, Gengler, a sophomore at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., took on the identity of a delegate from a UN member nation.

She and the rest of the Hamline team became diplomats for the United Arab Emirates, a Middle Eastern nation near Saudi Arabia.

"You have to know your country. You have to be able to state your country's views on everything," Gengler said. "You really do feel like a diplomat. It's not a game."

The United Arab Emirates, is one of the most oil-rich nations in the world, with lavish displays of wealth, like the world's tallest hotel and a giant man-made peninsula shaped like a palm tree.

On the other hand, there are areas of great poverty.

"There is great disparity within the country," Gengler said. "And they don't have the greatest human rights record with human trafficking and drug cartels."

Knowing that oil is a non-renewable resource, the nation has invested billions of dollars in renewable energy and green technology, Gengler said.

"They're working on creating an entire city that is sustainable, Masdar City," she said. "It would be completely renewable energies, like solar panels, wind, everything green to build this model of what is possible."

As part of the Model UN program, each country's delegates seek to make resolutions to help create international peace and security.

During the four-day conference, students gathered in meeting rooms from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. trying to hammer out proposals for change.

"You're working with all sorts of people with so many different points of view and everyone wants something," Gengler said. "It's all about compromising."

As a delegate, you have to know what your country would be willing to give up and where it would draw the line, she said.

It can be fun taking on the role of another country, pretending to have opinions different from your own, Gengler said.

"At the same time, having to promote the views of something I don't necessarily agree with could be very, very difficult," she said. "You learn a lot, not only about how other people see the world, but about why you see the world the way you do."

In the end, you're faced with a decision.

"It'll either strengthen your own opinions or it will make you sit back and think that maybe you should re-evaluate some things," Gengler said.

During the Model UN session, Gengler and her group hoped to push renewable energy.

They met hard opposition.

"Because there were so many poor countries, they were the majority," Gengler said.

Those delegations didn't want to talk about green energy. They wanted to talk about food.

"Every country came to us and their question was, 'Why are you using food crops for gas? Our people our starving. We depend on the crops that come out of these countries,'" Gengler said.

The world's population is predicted to reach 9.2 billion people by 2050 and the demand for food worldwide will increase by at least 50 percent, according to the World Food Program, Gengler said.

"Other than the United States, England and Western Europe, everyone is poor," she said.

Those conversations haunted Gengler.

"We have to stop with this whole idea of 'me,'" Gengler said. "It's 'I'm out for me. I'm gonna get mine, and too bad if you die in the process,' because none of us will come out alive if that's the mindset."

The people of the world need to work together, she said.

"I feel like the UN is under-utilized," Gengler said. "It is the only open forum for any nation to present their issues with everyone else and try to work things out."

Gengler is taking her UN experience further -- she'd like to see more students involved.

She's serving as an intern this year in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn. with a program called Global Classrooms, which brings Model UN into middle schools and high schools.

"My job is to go into classrooms and teach students resolution writing and parliamentary procedure," she said, explaining this helps prepare students for a Model UN conference in the spring.

"Knowing how much I learned with this in college, to have the opportunity in high school is absolutely invaluable," Gengler said. "It's easily the best thing I've done in college."

She'd love to see Le Mars area schools get involved in Model UN.

Teachers or students can contact Gengler or visit www.nhsmun.org.

"It's always possible," Gengler said.

After she finishes her social justice degree, Gengler hopes to work with a non-governmental organization like UNICEF or Human Rights Watch.

Seeing poverty in person in her travels and on TV has spurred her to do this kind of work.

"I just want to go work in poor countries, do what I can, where I can. I have the ability to do something, so why wouldn't I?" Gengler said. "Sure, I'm a U.S. citizen, but first and foremost I view myself as a member of the world."