Hello everyone!

My name is Anjana Pedapurapu, and I am the Director of Education for the James River Academy of Diplomacy. I wanted to start this off by wishing everyone a belated happy holiday! I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season and had a wonderful New Year! 

Before I continue, I would like to highlight some of the incredible work JRAD has done in the last calendar year. First, and most notably, we held the second iteration of our MUN summer workshop. Additionally, we greatly increased our productivity by reformatting the structure of our organization into different sectors, such as education, outreach, finance, and technology, with an elected board member serving as the director of each sector. We also began our public speaking course for CVCS in September, where we have been teaching students public speaking techniques as well as formats where they can apply them, such as debate and Model UN. Last, but definitely not least, we organized a travel team for middle and high school students that will be attending the 49th iteration of ODUMUNC. As we settle into the new year, our team aims to continue all of our previous work and accomplishments, while introducing new objectives. 

Our aforementioned CVCS class has officially transitioned out of public speaking and into debate. In this unit, we are teaching our students debate techniques through the format of Public Forum debate. In the weeks leading up to winter break, we loosely covered the actual rules and procedure of PF debate and did an overview of fundamental strategies good debaters often use. This month, we will review this information and start preparations for the final project, a class debate. 

The ODUMUNC travel team has also been making progress. In the last month or so, we have cemented our team, received positions, and started delegate training. Our delegates are well into researching their respective topics and beginning their position papers for the conference. This team consists of very accomplished and hardworking people, so I am sure we will make great progress over the next few weeks.

We have also begun preparations for our 2026 summer Model UN workshop, specifically regarding logistics. Our main goal is to improve upon last year, using feedback from parents, students, and instructors. However, we are missing some responses from our 2025 Camp Survey. If you have not yet filled out this survey, the JRAD team would greatly appreciate it if you could do so over the next couple of weeks.

If you haven’t already done so, you should check out JRAD’s social media! We recently started a new Instagram account (please disregard all old accounts). The username is @jr_diplomacy1. Make sure to follow and stay tuned for updates!

Thank you for keeping up! We can’t wait for you to see what else we have in store for 2026!

Best Wishes,

Anjana Peddapurapu

Director of Education

The JRAD Team