View Annual Review - IAESTE

WelcomeDear IAESTE Friends and Supporters,Welcome to the 2004 IAESTE Annual Reviewincorporating the General Secretary’s Report.It is a great pleasure for me to present my firstAnnual Review, not only as General Secretary ofIAESTE, but as the first woman ever to beelected to this position. I was responsible forthe IAESTE programme in Northern Irelandfrom 1989 and as a former teacher of modernlanguages felt that IAESTE provided awonderful opportunity to develop our localstudents, not only professionally, but also interms of improving their social andcommunication skills and making them moreculturally aware.The Aims of IAESTE, to exchange students andto provide them with work experience relevantto their degree courses, to bring young people,employers and academics together from thenations of the world are played out every yearin 85 countries. The results in the short termare obvious. The students receive traineeshipspertinent to their studies, perceived culturalbarriers are broken down among the manynationalities that live, work and play togetherover a period of 6-12 weeks. Employers receivebright, high calibre students who can providenew ideas, or complete a specific project in thegiven time and the young people return homemore confident and mature with a betterunderstanding of themselves, other culturesand of their own career choices. In the longterm the investments employers have made arereal and far reaching – for these are theprofessionals of the future, industrialists,engineers, and decision makers in their owncountries.IAESTE is a partnership with employers andacademics – it cannot survive without thesupport which in 2003 was made up of 3561employers and 1396 educational institutions.Since 1948 when IAESTE was founded, just over300,000 students have benefited from anIAESTE placement and with that in mind theFriends of IAESTE Network (FoIN) is dedicatedto tracing as many IAESTE alumni as possible.This is an exciting project with real potentialbut requires the support of all our members.At times world events affect the performance ofour members and co-operating institutions and2003 was just such a year but we congratulatethose who continued to work hard to ensure asnormal a service as possible in what were oftenvery difficult circumstances. In spite of a smalldecrease in the number of employers offeringtraineeships there was a significant increase inthe number of educational institutions whosupported IAESTE in 2003. We would like tothank you all most sincerely for enabling 4633students to participate and benefit from anIAESTE placement in 2003.IAESTE currently has 93 members and cooperatinginstitutions in 85 countries and sincelast year’s Review we welcomed 5 new cooperatinginstitutions to the Association fromGeorgia, Guinea, Iraq, Kenya and Macao. Incontrast, we wish to acknowledge thetremendous achievement of IAESTE Portugaland IAESTE Japan who this year celebrate 50and 40 years respectively as members of theAssociation.This year the Annual Review includes not onlythe General Secretary’s Annual Report whichsummarises the performance of the membersand co-operating institutions during the pastexchange year but also lists the employers andparticipating universities who supportedIAESTE during 2003.In conclusion I would like to thank everyonewho has contributed to this Annual Review anda very special thanks to all the National andLocal Committees who have worked so hard toprovide a quality service to both customers andclients throughout the world.Pauline FergusonGeneral SecretaryI A E S T E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 0 4 1