Conference for the Future
By: Audrey Spillman
It is simultaneously inspiring and exciting to watch your peers explain the deep personal incentives that have lead them to respectable, powerful positions in such an advanced youth conference as KUNA. Aisha Asad, Palmer Lessenberry, and Alex Mills are all extraordinary examples of motivated, passionate leaders who demonstrate high hopes and have big goals for the direction in which the world is heading today. Issues like youth involvement, apathy, environmental change and humanitarian efforts all come together in this PO committee of Aisha Asad, Palmer Lessenberry, and Alex Mills, and they promise to shoot for change.
Obviously, as the Secretary-General, KUNA is a huge part of Aisha Asad’s life: “The Y means, this is a bit cheesy, but it means home.” She is a powerful individual dedicated to change and justice in the world, especially regarding hunger, which was an integral part of her running platform. “The world is making enough food,” Aisha says. “It’s just a matter of not wasting it like a lot of developed countries unfortunately do.” According to Aisha, we Americans need to “put ourselves in perspective…we forget the struggles of other people.” She wants first world citizens to realize that this is a preventable hardship that millions of people face. “We take a lot of our food for granted,” she says. “I think it’s more about the infrastructure.”
Regarding what we, as the youth of Kentucky, can do to enact change, she addresses the way most of us try to pitch in: “Social media activism, in my opinion, is important to start the discussions… But if all your activism is limited to behind the screen… I don’t know how useful it is in the real world.” Aisha urges us at KUNA and beyond to go out into the world and create an initiative for physical good that we make with our own hands. “I think real activism doesn’t have to be entirely glamorous.”
Palmer Lessenbery, President of the United Nations General Assembly, has seen political activism as a major part of her future for a long time. “I’ve always wanted to sort of hold a leadership position in my life,” she says. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do… I decided to run as a junior and was really shocked to even get a position.” Her drive keeps her focused and her passion in what she believes in helps her funnel her energy into what matters most to her; LGBTQ and Women’s rights, Middle Eastern affairs, and pollution all strike her as the most important perils facing the modern world.
Palmer makes no underestimation as to how important her education has been in aiding this process: “School has given me an outlet to reach different people and I think that that’s one of the most important parts of being a leader.” She does stay sober, however, on how important it is to savor the limited amount of time we get to enjoy KUNA year after year. She says, “It flies by.”
Environmentalist, humanitarian, and film fanatic, Alex Mills’ largest argument is for the Earth itself. However, he places heavy significance on how we attain the balance that the powers of the world should strive to create, and use a certain sense of diplomacy to ensure everyone stays happy and keeps moving in the right direction: “We have to be pragmatic about it or we’ll never be able to decide.”
In offering encouragement to the future and current members and leaders of KUNA and Y-club in general, he enforces that “apathy is a huge issue” and that even when efforts seem infinitesimal, “there are great activists out there right now.”
Many ambassadors come here ready for a great time every year, and others come for a very specific reason: this is their home, and it is their future. The yearly process of deciding on the future Presiding Officers and providing these unique voices with a platform meant for people like them offers all ambassadors a chance to shape the experience of the conference and gives democracy the space to run its true course.
