Mayte Steeghs

My name is Mayte Steeghs, I am 15 years old, in Year 11, and attend the International School of the Hague in the Netherlands. I come from an international background, though having Dutch parents, I lived in Austria and Romania for collectively more than half of my life but now I have moved back to the Netherlands. I am passionate about debating, more specifically, leading the debate to help others expand their borders and thrive. Having attended an international school my entire life, I grew up in a dynamic, tolerant and international community where there was a strong emphasis on the importance of open-mindedness and tolerance. Not surprisingly, this caused me to naturally gravitate to debating as it aims to solve international issues that people in such communities are exposed to and naturally develop an interest for. Furthermore, I cultivated this interest being very curious and wanting to help others, this launched me into my MUN career. The first conference I attended was DeMUN in Rijnlands Lyceum Wassenaar where I was part of the Human Rights Committee, representing Spain. This is where I truly realized how passionate I was about global issues. In the same year, I attended MiniMUN where I was France in ECOSOC, and MUNISH where I was the main submitter of a resolution in the Human Rights Council as Norway. I then attended THIMUN which was an eye-opening experienced with many delegates from around the world working at an extremely high level to solve complex issues. This further stimulated my enthusiasm as working with very experienced delegates allowed me to see the depth of the work I was doing which further motivated me. A year later I once again attended DeMUN, but this time as president of the Environment Committee. As a beginner conference, I helped new delegates learn the basic rules of procedure and get started in their MUN career which I greatly enjoyed. I will also once again be attending MUNISH as part of the APQK as Georgia. Seeing as we are the hosting school, there were many meetings in preparation, two of which I also chaired. This weekend I will be chairing for MiniMUN as the president of ECOSOC with a more experienced audience. Furthermore, I took on MUN director tasks my organising the administrative side of the conference for our school by briefing delegates, holding meetings and registering them. Finally and as a conclusive statement, I am eager to attend and chair many new conferences and expand my horizons.