Community and Youth Engagement
Young Diplomats Program
The AIIA encourages young people to actively engage with international affairs, and seeks to provide as many forums as possible for them to do so. In conjunction with James Cook University, AIIA promotes a Young Diplomats Program for students in year 10 to prepare for and conduct mock international negotiations in a team competition. The program was first introduced in 1996 in 11 Townsville Secondary Schools as a joint project of the AIIA North Queensland Branch, James Cook University and the Queensland Department of Education before being also adopted by the AIIA’s Tasmanian and ACT’s Branch. In Townsville, the Program was revived in cooperation with James Cook University, in 2008 with 8 schools participating. The AIIA National Office held a reception for the winners in Canberra and arranged visits to policymakers and Diplomats to add to the students’ experience.
Youth Networks
A number of AIIA Branches offer youth networks for young professionals interested in international affairs including special events, consular visits, youth speakers and mentoring. The AIIA thus fulfils its role in fostering and developing Australia’s emerging young foreign policy professionals.
Internships
The AIIA National Office and a number of AIIA Branches offer internships for Australian and international students and graduates throughout the year.
Nygh Internship
The Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) and the Australian Branch of the International Law Association (ILA(AB)) fund the Peter Nygh Hague Conference Internship. The award supports a post graduate student or graduate of an Australian law school to undertake an internship with the Hague Conference on Private International Law (the Hague Conference) in the Netherlands by providing funds to cover the cost of travel to the Netherlands and a contribution towards living expenses.
Read more about this topic: Australian Institute Of International Affairs
Famous quotes containing the words community, youth and/or engagement:
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)
“Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)