After a strong showing in the Santa Clara Valley Model United Nations conference last weekend, Palo Alto High School’s Model United Nations club is looking ahead to their largest competition of the year next month in Berkeley.

Sophomore Ryan Wisowaty and junior Shannon Zhao took home the title of Outstanding Delegation after participating in the United Nations Development Program as the delegation from Lithuania, competing against high schoolers from across the West Coast.

“It felt good to win an award because it’s kind of a reward for hard work,” Wisowaty said.

SCVMUN was Zhao’s first conference as a member of Paly MUN. “I definitely want to do more conferences in the future because I think Model UN is a great way for students to understand the world around them better, and specifically the policies that affect … how a lot of our governments are run,” Zhao said.

According to its website, SCVMUN is the second largest conference on the West Coast, hosting over 1,000 students annually at Santa Teresa High School in San Jose.

MUN club president, Simran Pujji, also attended the conference, and plans to attend her final conference as a member of Paly MUN this March. The club will be attending Berkeley Model United Nations, the largest conference Paly will participate in this year.

BMUN takes place March 2-4 on the campus of University of California, Berkeley, and is run by students. Paly MUN hopes its delegations will be recognized at this event, as Paly is among 117 participating schools.

“We’re talking about a lot of relevant issues in the community—the world, and it enables you to actually understand what politicians and the UN are actually going through to find solutions to problems,” Pujji said. “It’s really relevant to your life and you sort of get an understanding of how complicated these issues are and how much countries have to compromise and give up to be able to collaborate with others.”