Kazan Model United Nations (MUN) – youth club which was created on the volunteering basis by alumna of the Global UGRAD program Zemfira Khusnutdinova in order to provide to the youth of Kazan series of personal development master classes in English which slogan is “Create yourself-Change the World” and help young people of Kazan to find path of self-improvement.
On the last meeting a great news were announced by the organizers. They told us that one of the exchange students from NSLIY program will come to our meeting in order to talk about US, share his experience about life in Russian and America and answer our questions. It happened on the 8th of April.
His name was Matthew Petty – an exchange student from Texas. Meeting with Mattehy continued for about 3 hours and at the end no one wanted to go home because of the coffee break which Zemfira organized and the atmosphere of friendship which appeared because of team building games and activities which were directed to break stereotypes about Russia and America. Matthew made a presentation about his city and Texas and moreover he brought many souvenirs and things which you can see only in Texas such as cove boy hat, pecans and the head of a real rattlesnake…
During our conversation it became clear that Russians view about American life is almost 80% falsely and it is based on Hollywood movies. In US knowledge about Russia is also not clear- many people is America don’t see the difference between Russia and USSR.
In the each who were in the meeting made his conclusions and impression but no one hesitated on the fact that it was a rare opportunity and very interesting experience, and all this is thanks to Matthew and KazMUN.

Dilya Urmancheeva- participant of the Kazan Model United Nations Club