Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

By Maria Alice Souza Maia

Every year, hundreds of Brazilian high schoolers participate in Yale Model United Nations conferences. Driven by curiosity and a desire to develop their curriculum and abilities, they become much more than the best delegates.

Yale Model United Nations, or YMUN — one of the oldest Model UN conferences —each year attracts Brazilian high schoolers wishing to develop their oratory, leadership and debating skills. However, beyond this international experience, a long-lasting impact reigns among the Brazilian youth.

More than 100 students from Brazil attend YMUN every year. Accompanied by their school or competing independently, they go to Yale University wishing to perform their best under the position they receive, and, afterward, they create organizations to help other high schoolers to have the same experience.

Those organizations are spread out across Brazil and they help teens access Model UN conferences. YMUN kicks off Model UN season on the international stage, leading Brazilian high schoolers, from public and private schools, to do the impossible to afford this experience.

In 2022, Lucas Araujo Faro Correa founded Morumbi MUN, a social business developed to qualify national simulations and include young Brazilians in the most prestigious conferences in the world. According to Moru, for the last three years, it has directly helped approximately 100 Brazilian students with mentoring programs to participate at YMUN.

“As a high schooler, my school didn’t talk a lot about the existence of extracurriculars. And, I was curious to see how society works as a whole and dive into the problems that affect our society. Later on, I discovered the Model UN activity by myself and, as a chance to develop myself, I started doing them,” Moru said, when asked about what inspired him to found MoruMUN.

“At first, my goal was always international MUNs. However, the cost of attending these conferences is very expensive, especially for Brazilians,” Moru continued. “At that time, there weren’t a lot of organizations offering this service. So, as a way to pave the path for other high schoolers with ambition like me, I founded MoruMUN.”

At YMUN 2025, 60 percent of Moru’s delegates were awarded Best or Outstanding Delegate. These awards are chosen by the chairs of each committee, based on the performance of the delegates (public speaking, leadership and critical thinking) and the size of the committees, and are therefore highly competitive. One of the high schoolers helped by Moru and awarded by Yale, Raphael Durval, spoke to the work done by the organization.

“In Brazil, there are a lot of organizations that only care about the award, but at MoruMUN, they are focused on helping us achieve our full potential either as a delegate or as a leader or as anything else,” Durval said. “Moru is focused on helping us to experience this conference, especially when it comes to the financial part, they provided support for everything.’’

When asked about his experience at YMUN, Durval described how the conference’s staff provided him with opportunities to get to know the Yale campus and “feel like Yale students.” He also believes that YMUN values “quality over quantity” in committee sizes.

“This feature helps delegates develop practical leadership skills, as we have to talk to everyone in the room,” Durval said.’

Ícaro Teixeira, MoruMUN’s operation director, described how the conference can open many doors, academically and professionally.

“YMUN itself is an incredible international opportunity,” he wrote. “In my first year, I was a scholar in the Global Exchange Program (GEP), where I had classes with Yale professors along with a group of about 20 other students, something very select among the hundreds of conference participants. It is in this type of environment that we find the most opportunities and where we make incredible friends who add a lot to our journey to university. I remember, for example, talking to my Directors, in both editions I participated in, about colleges abroad.”,

Teixeira is an incoming freshman at Williams University.

He elaborated more on how his experience working for the YMUN team last year in YMUN LATAM shaped his professional life, “Last year I was Assistant Director for the I YMUN LATAM and this year I will be Assistant Secretary General of the conference. One of the main factors is the team itself, which is made up of students from Yale and other renowned institutions throughout Latin America. Furthermore, dealing with the challenges associated with managing a conference of this magnitude is an unparalleled source of learning.”

Moreover, Halytza Vieira Dutra, MoruMUN’s institutional director and MUN coach, said that YMUN inspired her passion for Model UN and her desire to study abroad.

“The simulation is truly an immersive cultural experience that makes you think about how small Brazil is,” Dutra said. “YMUN taught me that the impossible is not so unattainable. For the first time, I was in contact with incredible people who studied at Yale. This made me see that it is not impossible to get into a prestigious university in the USA.”

Dutra was awarded an Outstanding Delegate and an Honorable Mention in the 2023 and 2024 editions of YMUN.

Teixeira emphasized how meaningful he felt his work with MoruMUN to be, noting how the organization allows many young people to attend international conferences when they otherwise would not have been able too.

“The impact of our logistical guidance and fundraising programs (my endless applause to Lucas Faro for being the big star behind them) is gigantic,” Teixeira said. “In addition, currently as Director of Operations but before that as Academic Director, I am very happy to have been part of the development of programs such as Veritas and Pindorama (preparatory mentorship programs to help delegates go to YMUN and YMUN LATAM), important steps in the brilliant journey that MoruMUN has been following, having won a commendable variety of international awards that, in my opinion, are unmatched in the Brazilian market.”

Between May 16 and May 18, MoruMUN will participate in the second edition of the YMUN LATAM, reuniting a brand new group of Brazilian high-schoolers to learn more about debating skills and inspire more Brazilians to become young social leaders.

Yale Model United Nations has been running since 1974; this year the conference happened between Jan. 23 and Jan. 26.