On November 17, 2009, distinguished guests from Kazakhstan, Nepal, Belgium, Sri Lanka, the U.S.A, Korea, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as many honored Chinese guests all converged at the 2009 Education Forum for Asia’s Euro-Asian Education Cooperation Conference. EFA Secretary General Yao Wang gave some closing remarks and helped to summarize the successes and achievements of the conference. The Vice Mayor of Xi’an, the host city of the conference, also gave some closing remarks.
During the conference’s two days, the guests all shared their ideas and plans for international education exchanges and elementary education collaboration projects that are under development, hoping to find new and innovative ideas to increase and improve educational relationships between nations. There were specific forums to discuss exchanges within Asia as well as between Asia and Europe and the conference served to provide a platform for this type of communication.
Apart from these agreements, The Education Minister of Sri Lanka gave an excellent closing speech and offered an opportunity for 100 Beichuan Middle School students to take a one week exchange to Sri Lanka as an educational experience to gain a better understanding of Sri Lanka and help them to overcome the horrors of their experience with the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.
The fundamental accomplishments of the conference were:
1) The Education Forum for Asia and China Youth Daily sponsored photography
contest (the 4th consecutive one in as many years) winning photographs and artistic works will be on display throughout South Asia during the next year as an undertaking of the Qingdao Foreign Exchange Academy.
2) A dinner party was held, themed‘Love Around Beichuan’, that was devoted to all the students and faculty of Beichuan Middle School, which was annihilated in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The publication ‘Love Around Beichuan- A Proposal to Support Beichuan’ was presented as a way of raising funds in order to improve the quality of education in Beichuan and help them to rebuild their school.
At the same time, The headmaster of Beichuan Middle School, on behalf of all the staff and students, presented a copy of the publication ‘Students Chant for Love Around Beichuan’to all the honored guests, both local and international, in hopes of building awareness of the current situation there as well as serving as a wonderful gift.
3) During the discussion on the cultivation on the cultivation of new talent, The Chairman of China Promotions Si Yuanping was representing Education Forum for Asia, Beijing, Euro China Commerce Center, and China Youth Daily International Department determined to set up a fund for an Asian Youth Entrepeneur Fund.
4) The Taiwan All China Muduo Learning Society and the Benhui Education Assessment Organization decided to collaborate for the 2010 Education Forum for Asia annual conference concerning ‘Cherishing Education Forum’. An invitation was issued for any Chinese education workers around the globe in order to encourage wide spread participation in the conference.
Education for Asia was first initiated in December, 2003 and has since held 6 annual meetings of this type. Through their hard work over the years, EFA has attracted the attention of the entire Asia Pacific region, and are known bymany high government officials and key figures in the education industry and beyond, as a source of cross border collaborations manifesting in forums.
Previous: The Education Forum for Asia Sponsored "Love Around Beichuan"Dinner Party in Support of Beichuan Middle School