Sri Lankan Future World Leaders come back winners from USA

The 10 member Sri Lankan student delegation that attended the Future World Leaders Summit in Washington DC in USA from 23rd to 31st March this year, returned home with pride as one of the " Most Outstanding Delegations" at the summit. The March winter summit had 387 student leaders from 34 countries. Sri Lanka was the 7th largest country delegation and the 2nd Largest Asian delegation with 10 members. Japan was the largest Asian delegation with 27. The Sri Lanka country presentation at the opening session was voted the best and most colorful.

The American National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and the 2 million member strong American National Education Association (NEA) endorses and recognizes the summit as an approved activity that prepares students for civic responsibility and the challenges of tomorrow.

The Manager of the Sri Lanka delegation was Ms. Rochelle Melder a form teacher of Asian International School Colombo who was also an instructor at the summit. She was the first Sri Lankan woman to be invited as an instructor to this prestigious World Summit in USA.

The summit participants, instructors and the speakers were impressed with the command of English of the Sri Lankan delegation and their broad knowledge of world affairs. Sri Lankan students were the best in Question/Answer sessions, where at every seminar the country was projected very high as a nation of intelligent youth. The 387 student leaders from 34 countries were divided into 10 working groups of 40 students to discuss, debate, research and present a communiqué each at the final summit in a UN style voting by country delegations. The topics were, Arms Control, Peacekeeping, Terrorism, Environment, International Aid, International Trade, Health Care, Human Rights, Nationalism, Refugees. Sri Lankans Malinda Thilakeratne was elected Chaiman of the working group on Terrorism while Anisha Perera was elected as the main presenter of the communiqué on Refugees which she did so eloquantly. Dinal Edirisinghe of Royal College was selected as one of the five speakers. His impromptu speech was praised by Ms Ginger King the Dean of Presidential Classroom Inc as one of the best banquet speeches made at the Future World Leaders Summit since its inception.

Registrations for the March 2004 and July 2004 summits are now open and free information and registration forms are available on: Tel: (94) 77-787515 or (94) 77-379359 or email: futureleader@eureka.lk