When 12 students joined BYU’s 2026 Model Organization of American States (MOAS) team, they knew they’d have a chance to research issues facing the Americas and then debate them at a simulation of a real Organization of American States meeting. What many of them did not expect, however, was that the experiences they would have would prepare them to tackle important issues in the real world.
Preparing as Peru
The Model Organization of American States team is sponsored by the Latin American Studies (LAS) program at the Kennedy Center for International Studies. This year’s team was led by instructors Jason Jensen and Marlene Hansen Esplin.
Each team that plans to attend the national MOAS conference is assigned a country to represent; the BYU team was assigned Peru this year. They prepared by taking a prep course, during which they researched Peru and its stances on the various issues that would be discussed at the conference. “We did a lot of reading, watched a lot of documentaries, and looked at a lot of news posts,” says team member Tori Mask, who was also this year’s LAS valedictorian. “I feel like that was all super helpful, to think about what Peru would say and would want projected about their country and their stance.”
Jessica Jones Fletcher, who is a Spanish Translation major, adds, “I think it helped me to connect with Peru on a much deeper level and to understand issues very specific to Peru. We talk about issues in Latin America, and I lived in Paraguay for a few months with the Self-Reliance internship program. But studying Peru helped me to really internalize what made Peru, Peru.”
Jesus Maldonado, a Neuroscience major who is Peruvian, enjoyed preparing his PDR about drug prevention. “Our PDR was about creating a new school curriculum where we can explain to teenagers about drug consequences through programs and campaigns. The part I enjoyed most was doing research because I've never imagined how problematic drugs in Peru are.”
At the Conference
The Washington Model Organization of American States conference (which the students often refer to as simply “the model”) was held 7–10 April, 2026, at Trinity Washington University in Washington, DC. BYU was one of about twenty colleges and universities from the Americas that participated.
Many students from the BYU team were participating for the first time, but quickly got past their nerves, says Hailey Ponczoch, a team member and LAS major: “I think most people feel pretty nervous until we get to the model and recognize, ‘Oh, of all the schools here, BYU is one of the best prepared.’ We're just really well versed on the procedures, on the rules, etc., which is nice. It gives a lot of confidence to be able to say, ‘I do know how to do this.’”
The conference is broken into five committees, with students from each team assigned to each one. “I would say 75 to 80% of the time at the conference, we were in our individual committees,” says Elena Aguirre, an LAS major who was head delegate for the BYU team. “And then for the opening and closing ceremony, we were together.” As head delegate, Aguirre was assigned to give a statement about what the team was coming to do. “My statement was that the Americas as a whole have a lot of promise and are world leaders in so many ways and have rich cultures and rich resources,” she says. “But too often, marginalized communities and underserved communities are not included in resolutions.”
Nathan Lund, a graduate student in Anthropology, acted as a rapporteur at the conference, meaning that he assisted in his assigned committee with reading out proposed draft resolutions (PDRs), calculating voting, and serving as an in-between for the delegates and the chair. He explains the basic format: “I’d present the PDR, then the team who proposed it would give their speech for the PDR, trying to convince the other delegations to vote for it. And then we'd go into question period where other delegations could ask questions to the delegation. And then we'd go into voting.”
At last year’s conference, Ponczoch was elected chair of the Third Committee for the 2026 conference. Other than her and her vice-chair, no one else on the committee had ever done MOAS before. “It was cool to see how quickly everyone bought into it and was willing to participate and try things,” she says. “You have to speak in diplomatic language, which can be hard, but people were willing to learn and correct themselves, which was really fun.”
Experiencing DC
When they weren’t debating in their committees, the team members visited museums and monuments around Washington DC. They also had the chance to make connections with diplomatic personnel.
“One of the greatest experiences was we got to meet the permanent mission of Peru to the OAS,” says LAS major Connor Howard. “We interviewed them and talked to them about the positions; we got to run by them what we'd prepared and what we perceive the official positions of the government of Peru would be, and we got their feedback. It was an amazing experience.”
The BYU team also got the exclusive chance to meet Laura Gil, the Assistant Secretary General of the OAS. For LAS major Eliza Beazer, it was one of the best parts of the experience. “She talked a lot about how people are afraid of saying what they mean, even in OAS meetings, because it’s so polarized; delegates from different countries won't actually address some issues that need to be addressed. The importance of being frank, is how she put it. And I think that will be very helpful in my future.”
For Fletcher, a standout moment came when the team visited the Vietnam Memorial. “Kids from a local Christian school started writing letters to a name that they found on the wall. They picked a name that they connected with in some way—maybe they had the same name or same birthday. And they'd write these letters expressing really profound, really moving gratitude for their sacrifice, and they always left the letter with a prayer and a scripture, which was very tender for me, especially coming from young kids. In a world that I feel is very chaotic, it was really moving to see that kind of love and appreciation for sacrifice, and also the ability to collaborate and to work through conflict together.”
Making Lives Better
Though the MOAS doesn’t give out awards, the team felt they’d been successful in that they’d performed well. Another notable achievement is that Aguirre was elected Secretary General, the highest elected official in the model, for next year’s conference; BYU has never had a student achieve that before. She says, “In the closing session, everyone from the whole model came into the room, and I gave my speech. There was one other candidate who also gave an amazing speech, and I was blessed to be the winner of that election. So it was a super surreal, super cool moment. I'm very proud.”
The benefits are much more far-reaching than what the students do at the conference, however. Several of the students speak of how the skills they learned will help them in their schooling and careers; Maldonado says that “doing all that research helped me to improve my reading comprehension. Right now I'm doing research and reading scientific papers, and doing MOAS improved my retention and taught me to look for key details.”
Mask says her skills in public speaking grew: “There were a lot of opportunities to speak; I gave at least four speeches for other people's PDRs. At first I was super nervous, but I was able to learn and prepare more and then implement that so later speeches were better. I felt like there was a growth aspect throughout the model, and that was cool to see.”
Howard says that he learned how to “have conversations with people and be very diplomatic, and how to work together with people who disagree with us. And you don’t always give speeches in your everyday life, but being able to succinctly and briefly express your position, your opinions, and what you want is a very powerful skill. I feel like that translates very well to careers; maybe you're not going to be a diplomat, but if you're a manager or you're in charge of others, you need to know how to communicate very effectively with them.”
But the benefits of MOAS are more than academic or professional; they can reach into how students approach issues in all areas of their lives. Beazer says, “I'm pre-med, so I don't want to be a diplomat, but I think it was super applicable to my life in general—realizing that there are multiple ways to look at a problem and that it's not necessarily about right or wrong; there are different perspectives, and we can work together to create the best solution.”
Lund says that he found hope in the conference: “It's kind of depressing hearing all the sad stuff that's happening in the news. So doing the model was a bit hopeful in that we're practicing diplomacy for the betterment of people in all countries. And being at the OAS building, I was able to see that there are people in these diplomatic roles who are trying their best to help people who need help. Even though a lot of times the news just likes to push the worst parts of the world, it was hopeful to see that there are people and programs that are set up to help us develop that ability to help other people when we can.”
For LAS major and team member Mica Cors, the lessons she learned are wide-ranging and important. “For the past year or so, I've been wrestling with the question of how we can effectively make change in our communities and in our governments. What are the real actions that I can take? And I feel like it's really hard, because we have very large institutions, and we feel like very small people sometimes. How can we affect these big things that are happening? It's really important to have hope. We can't just give up on systems because what we do have and what we are able to do is better than nothing. And so we should continue to participate and care about them and not give up on them even when it feels like they're not serving us in the way we'd like them to. I learned that it's important to understand those systems because when we do, we're able to participate, and we're able to support those systems and those organizations and let them support us in the goals and changes we're trying to make in our lives and in our communities.”
In conclusion, Cors says, the biggest thing that she learned is that though the participants all come from different schools and study different subjects, “the most important work is the science of helping people to alleviate human suffering and to improve the lives of the people around us. And I felt like that's something that we participated in a little bit; even in just a mock fashion, we got to practice what it's like to try to make people's lives better. And I feel like that is a skill that I can take from MOAS and apply into my career and into my family.”
Interested in learning more about MOAS? Contact Dr. Marlene Hansen Esplin.