Shobana Kamineni, Dr. Mukund Rajan urge participants of HMUN India 2017 to take action on global issues

The seventh edition of the Harvard Model United Nations India hosted by the Harvard IRC and Worldview Education kicked off with its opening ceremony on the August 12, 2017. With over 1500 delegates attending this year, the biggest conference yet, the delegates have debated on prominent issues such as funding "Sustainable growth in Africa", "Mental health awareness and treatment" and many other issues as well with solutions in the form of a resolution at the closing committee sessions on August 15.

As a part of HMUN India, co-hosted by the Harvard International Relations Council and Worldview Education, special sessions and talks were conducted as part of the 'Leadership Forum' with senior industry experts in attendance. The Leadership Forum acts as a platform for the industry to engage with Gen-Z, or Gen-S (A Generation of Solvers), as Sampreeth Reddy, the Managing Director of Worldview called them. As a part of this in this year's edition of the conference, the keynote speaker was Shobana Kamineni, the first woman President of CII, and Dr. Mukund Rajan, Chief Ethics officer Tata Sons chaired the India @75 panel which also had Savita Mahajan as a panelist.

During their addresses to the audience, they urged the young crowd to not only think of solutions for global and national issues but also to take these solutions seriously and put them into practice.

As a part of the opening ceremony, the Worldview Education and The Harvard International Relations Council announced the HMUN India fund, the proceeds from which will go to develop a government school in Shahpur village in Telangana.

On the second day of the conference at the Leadership forum, Asim Parekh from Coca-cola India, spoke to the delegates about the "Fruit Circular Economy" and encouraged students to take up agriculture sciences as a career, emphasising on how large corporations need to take up sustainability in their practices and how that would create a positive effect on these environment and surroundings.

On day three of the conference, the penultimate day, Jason Lewis delivered a talk at the leadership forum in the evening. Lewis is the only man to circumnavigate the earth using nothing but human power.