A Rising Tide: DUMUN Story

It started, honestly, with Isa feeling completely overwhelmed. In August 2024, Isa came home from his first Model UN conference and admitted something at the dinner table that a lot of freshmen feel but don't say out loud. Everyone else in that room already knew the ropes, and no one had shown him how to learn them. Instead of letting that frustration fade, he turned it into a question. What if the next student who walked into that room didn't have to feel that way? What if we built a community instead of just a conference?

Neither of us wanted to answer that question alone. By September, we were sophomores at Hinsdale Central figuring this out together, two students agreeing that everyone around us, from our own school and every school nearby, deserved a shared place to grow.

What followed was fast, and it was never just the two of us. In just two months, on October 1 and October 22, 2024, DUMUN went from an idea to a legally recognized institution, earning federal tax exempt status and Illinois incorporation back to back. But paperwork doesn't build an organization. People do. That fall, a secretariat of more than 20 students joined us, and together we logged incredible amount of volunteer hours planning logistics, managing outreach, and learning to run a nonprofit from scratch, all while still carrying full course loads. What held us together wasn't titles. It was a shared belief that we were building something bigger than any one of us, for a community that didn't exist yet.

By the time DUMUN I opened its doors on April 27, 2025, that community was standing right in front of us. More than 70 delegates from 10 Chicago area schools, different campuses and different backgrounds, all seated at the same tables, debating real global crises side by side. A sitting Illinois state representative spoke to them not as an audience, but as the next generation of leaders already doing the work. It worked because unity, not individual achievement, was what we'd built it on from day one.

The recognition that followed never felt like it belonged to just the two of us. Coverage from The Hinsdalean, Hinsdale Magazine, and WBEZ NPR Chicago told our story as founders, but we knew the real story was the secretariat's sustained work. Through the July 2025 IRS confirmation, our first Summer Academy that same summer, and formal recognition from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth and Governor JB Pritzker, none of that happens with just two people.

Then came the real test. Could we do it again, better, and could our community keep growing? On January 10, 2026, DUMUN II answered that. Ninety delegates, more than 120 in attendance, 10 schools, and keynotes from a sitting U.S. Congressman and our own Village of Hinsdale's president. Our second Summer Academy followed that July, expanded from three days to five, welcoming even more students into the fold. Every one of those moments was proof of the same thing. This was never our momentum alone. It was a community's.

That's what we want people to understand about DUMUN. Our spark at that dinner table mattered, but so did every secretariat member, chair, and intern who showed up to a  meeting, answered a worried parent's email, or made a first time middle schooler feel less alone than Isa once had. We didn't grow because two of us worked hard. We grew because dozens of students, across dozens of schools, decided unity was worth building, and that raising the next generation of leaders meant raising them together.

None of this happened in a vacuum, and we want to say that plainly. Our families believed in this before anyone else did, and supported us through every late night, every logistics headache, and every moment we doubted ourselves. The Hinsdale Public Library opened its doors to us for our meetings and Summer Academy sessions, giving us a home before we had one of our own. The Hinsdale Central Model UN Club is where this all began. It's the place that taught us what Model UN could be, long before we knew we'd build something new from it. And Hinsdale South High School has hosted us year after year, giving DUMUN I and DUMUN II a venue worthy of the work our delegates put in. We are grateful to every one of them.

As we look ahead to our third annual conference in 2027, that's still our foundation. Community, unity, and a shared investment in the leaders we're all becoming. President Kennedy put it better than we could when he said a rising tide lifts all the boats. This organization has never belonged to the two of us. It belongs to every family, every school, every institution, and every student who chose to row with us.

We are incredibly proud of serving our community on the ground, of making a real, tangible impact on students, schools, and institutions across Greater Chicagoland and DuPage County, Illinois. That's the work we set out to do, and it's the work we'll keep showing up for. We will keep striving for better community and next generation leaders that will help make this world a better place.