Thank you 2024, welcome 2025!!!

The nostalgia with which we bid farewell to one year is offset by the excitement with which we begin the next. Rather than saying goodbye to what is leaving, we must hold on to what it left us with. For us at DBB, 2024 brought clarity, direction, and awareness. It allowed us to understand and define the essence of what we do and began to teach us how to do it better and what we must build around it so that it can reach more educational spaces and more people open to learning and teaching.

Today we say goodbye to a wonderful year. 2024 was a discovery for us!

We discovered that we are a great team and that we are supported and accompanied by people with great talent and dedication. We also found that what we do makes a lot of sense and that doing it better is as possible as it is necessary.

Exactly 12 months ago, in this same mood, we dreamed of half of what we saw happen. Our 2024 began with SICMUN VI 2024 and the unforgettable trip that took us, along with a group of almost 40 MUN delegates (including my besties), on a fun and enriching tour of Houston, Georgetown, and Austin. With visits to NASA, professional basketball, and the Texas Capitol, along with museums, amusement parks, schools, universities, and a relaxed, motivating, and very fun atmosphere, we started the year off on the right foot because our intention to grow led us to explore South America and consolidate Europe. And so, as possibilities began to emerge in the southern part of the continent in Argentina, Colombia, and Peru, an alliance was formed that, in the same way, but a year ago, we had started in Lisbon, Portugal, with our great friend Jorge, who allowed and facilitated a journey that became one of the most memorable and meaningful trips I can remember and that brought into our lives an equally unforgettable group of people whom we now consider family and with whom we made it possible and to whom we are grateful: some because they opened their doors to us, welcomed us, taught us, and learned from us; others because they trusted us and our project and supported it until it became possible; and us because we sought and found the threads, tied them together, and planted the seed of MUN skills that will surely germinate within a high-quality and prestigious academic community inside and outside Portugal, as well as the one that was left to germinate under the care of DBB with the implementation of the “Happy Schools” Educational Model created and recognized by UNESCO, which promotes happiness as a source of success and which we are applying in our daily lives in order to take it wherever it is appropriate to take it.

So yes, although we feel nostalgic about saying goodbye to the past and a couple of other things, we are excited to compensate for our nostalgia and declare ourselves ready for the new paths we are about to take, which for now seem to be leading us to Texas with a large group of MUN delegates and to attend an event that is seven years older and seven times bigger than it was when it started, and then to experience the Big Apple (NYC) in a new type of “tailor-made trip” that has been and is being planned with care and dedication and with the intention of opening eyes with potential to new perspectives, opportunities, and possibilities.

By the couple of other things, I am referring to other achievements that also excite us and that add to the new MUN Online conferences in which students from the DBB network in Nigeria, Portugal, the US, and Mexico come together, the growth of virtual workshops and social networks, and the strengthening of our alliances in Querétaro, Chihuahua, Yucatán, and Nuevo León, along with the use of simpler and more capable software and platforms. We will begin 2025 as a Registered Trademark® and with the start of operations of the Delegates Beyond Borders A.C. Foundation, which will be dedicated, among other things, promoting and providing (with our usual warmth) quality education focused on equality, a culture of peace, appreciation of cultural diversity, and the contribution of a sustainable culture, as suggested by the UN through SDG 4.7: Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship. We want to offer this to any student, family, and/or school that finds value in it.

Happy New Year to everyone, thank you for everything and especially for being part of DBB.

We wish you a 2025 full of health, blessings, and opportunities.

Until next time…

Robert