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It is a great pleasure for me to present my first
Annual Review, not only as General Secretary of
IAESTE, but as the first woman ever to be
elected to this position. I was responsible for
the IAESTE programme in Northern Ireland
from 1989 and as a former teacher of modern
languages felt that IAESTE provided a
wonderful opportunity to develop our local
students, not only professionally, but also in
terms of improving their social and
communication skills and making them more
culturally aware.
The Aims of IAESTE, to exchange students and
to provide them with work experience relevant
to their degree courses, to bring young people,
employers and academics together from the
nations of the world are played out every year
in 85 countries. The results in the short term
are obvious. The students receive traineeships
pertinent to their studies, perceived cultural
barriers are broken down among the many
nationalities that live, work and play together
over a period of 6-12 weeks. Employers receive
bright, high calibre students who can provide
new ideas, or complete a specific project in the
given time and the young people return home
more confident and mature with a better
understanding of themselves, other cultures
and of their own career choices. In the long
term the investments employers have made are
real and far reaching – for these are the
professionals of the future, industrialists,
engineers, and decision makers in their own
countries.
IAESTE is a partnership with employers and
academics – it cannot survive without the
support which in 2003 was made up of 3561
employers and 1396 educational institutions.
Since 1948 when IAESTE was founded, just over
300,000 students have benefited from an
IAESTE placement and with that in mind the
Friends of IAESTE Network (FoIN) is dedicated
to tracing as many IAESTE alumni as possible.
Welcome
Dear IAESTE Friends and Supporters,
Welcome to the 2004 IAESTE Annual Review
incorporating the General Secretary’s Report.
This is an exciting project with real potential
but requires the support of all our members.
At times world events affect the performance of
our members and co-operating institutions and
2003 was just such a year but we congratulate
those who continued to work hard to ensure as
normal a service as possible in what were often
very difficult circumstances. In spite of a small
decrease in the number of employers offering
traineeships there was a significant increase in
the number of educational institutions who
supported IAESTE in 2003. We would like to
thank you all most sincerely for enabling 4633
students to participate and benefit from an
IAESTE placement in 2003.
IAESTE currently has 93 members and cooperating
institutions in 85 countries and since
last year’s Review we welcomed 5 new cooperating
institutions to the Association from
Georgia, Guinea, Iraq, Kenya and Macao. In
contrast, we wish to acknowledge the
tremendous achievement of IAESTE Portugal
and IAESTE Japan who this year celebrate 50
and 40 years respectively as members of the
Association.
This year the Annual Review includes not only
the General Secretary’s Annual Report which
summarises the performance of the members
and co-operating institutions during the past
exchange year but also lists the employers and
participating universities who supported
IAESTE during 2003.
In conclusion I would like to thank everyone
who has contributed to this Annual Review and
a very special thanks to all the National and
Local Committees who have worked so hard to
provide a quality service to both customers and
clients throughout the world.
Pauline Ferguson
General Secretary
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