Tarry Town, 26 August 2013
Dear Summer School Participants,
Distinguished Representatives of Education First,
Distinguished guest speakers, panelists and trainers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a pleasure for me to address you at the opening of your SUMMER SCHOOL PROGRAMME here in Tarrytown.
I am pleased to do so in my capacity as the High Representative of the UN Alliance of Civilizations and the former President of the UN General Assembly.
Let me start by recognizing our partners from Education First:
Ms. Iris Horman, President, International Language Centers,
Mr. Carl-Johan Westring, Vice president, Global Business Development and
Mr. Philip Johnson, Executive Director, EF Tarrytown Campus, whom I thank for his kind invitation .
Let me congratulate our 100 Summer School Participants, who have been selected out of 15,000 thousand applications! You are certainly an exceptional group of young people that has demonstrated above average performance. Our job in the Summer School programme is to ensure that your abilities are nurtured and enhanced to the fullest extent possible within the time available to us.
Distinguished Youth Participants,
UNAOC – EF Summer School provides you an opportunity to investigate critical global issues and to collaborate proposing unique solutions to these problems.
You came here with many differences. You come from over 90 countries. Collectively, you speak hundreds of languages other than English. You represent 100 different organizations with joint memberships in the millions. You each have your own past and present challenges. However, you share many important things: you each have a common dream to build a better world by helping your community address global problems. And this is what is important: the desire to leave things in a better shape than you found them.
You also represent our greatest hope and the strongest force for positive change. Contrary to popular opinion, you are not the leaders of tomorrow; you are the leaders of today. You set social and economic trends. You are the innovators in social entrepreneurship, experts in social networking, early adopters and adapters of technologies, creators of millions of e-businesses and inventors of popular culture.
As High Representative, I have pledged to do our utmost to contribute to empowerment of our youth. The Alliance has already developed many cross-cutting initiatives in these respective fields. The Summer School is one of the most successful!!
It was important for us to build on the success of the Summer School to partner with an organization that shares the same values. This is how we embraced the opportunity to partner with Education First, a leading private international education company that is also convinced that youth are a driving force for positive social change, and that to find workable solutions to global problems, we need to listen to you. This is what we will do during the all week of your Summer School!
Distinguished Youth Participants,
As 2015 quickly approaches, with less than 1000 days left to achieve the agenda, efforts should be redoubled to promote youth employment. In designing the new agenda, several factors must be considered. Specifically, the new development agenda must be inclusive and people-centered, benefiting and involving all people, particularly youth.
In this regard, the Alliance of Civilizations is right on target with the concerns of the Post 2015 Development Agenda.
Lastly, I would like you to know that, I have the privilege of partnering with Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Al-Nasser of Qatar on her new global initiative, Educate A Child (EAC). I also currently serve as a board member of Education Above All. In November 2012, Her Highness Ms. Sheikha Moza launched EAC at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), to address the dire need to increase enrollment and improve quality education worldwide.
This initiative aims to give millions of young children the opportunity to receive quality education that will, in turn, provide the necessary skills that make young people competitive and desirable workers. We will look for them and hopefully welcome some of them in our Summer School!
All the best to each of you as you return to your respective countries and continue to pursue your life goals while you contribute to build a better world for yourselves and the generations that will come after you.
Thank you. Enjoy your stay in Tarrytown and New York!