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The Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF)
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| Headquarters | Singapore | |||
| Type | Socio-cultural organisation | |||
| Partners | Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mongolia, Myanmar, The Netherlands, Pakistan, The Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, Vietnam, European Commission, ASEAN Secretariat | |||
| Leaders | ||||
| - | Executive Director | Dominique Girard | ||
| - | Deputy Executive Director | Nguyen Quoc Khanh | ||
| Establishment | 1997 | |||
| Website http://www.asef.org/ |
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The Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) is an international, non-profit organization based in Singapore that was established in 1997 by the countries of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Its mission is to promote mutual understanding and collaboration between the people of Asia and Europe through intellectual, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges.
In its first ten years, ASEF has organised over 450 thematic-based projects in Asia and Europe, in the form of conferences, lecture tours, workshops, seminars and online platforms[1]. It has brought together around 15,000 direct participants and reaching out to an even wider audience in both regions.
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In March 1996, the leaders of twenty-five countries, together with the European Commission, met in Thailand for the First Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). In this inaugural meeting, they agreed for the establishment of ASEF in 1997 as a central institution of ASEM's social, cultural and intellectual pillar[2]. One of the main tasks of ASEF was to become an interface between civil society groups and governments by facilitating interactions among people from diverse fields and transmits the resulting outputs as recommendations to policy-makers.[3]
By nature, ASEF is different from other multilateral organisations, as it works with both ASEM governments and civil society. It injects civil society inputs to the ASEM governments, and at the same time works on creating sustainable networks and enhancing ASEM visibility in the society. This unique attribute allows ASEF's activities to generate ideas and solutions that would not normally emerge from purely inter-governmental or purely civil society processes.
To date, ASEF is the only permanent physical institution of ASEM process.
ASEF reports to a Board of Governors who are appointed by the 45 ASEM partners and meet twice a year. At its permanent office in Singapore, ASEF is composed of an executive office, one administrative department, and the following four programme departments[4]:
Provides young artists and cultural professionals in Asia and Europe with an environment for dialogue, evolving into positive artistic interventions, dynamic cultural networks and cultural policy development in and between two regions. Its activities includes Asia-Europe Forum for Young Photographers [1], Asia-Europe Museum Network (ASEMUS)[2], and culture360.org web portal [3].
It activities contributes to policy debate and strategic thinking by providing a common platform for discussion on the areas of governance, academic co-operation, dialogue on cultures and civilizations, international relations, and environment and sustainable development.[5]
People-to-People Exchange programme seeks to strengthen youth networks, in particular among the next generation of leaders. Activities cover two main areas: educational exchanges, and cooperation and dialogues between youth and their organisations (e.g. Asia-Europe Young Political Leaders Symposium and Asia-Europe Young Entrepreneurs Forum).
Public Affairs programme provides publicity and press support for ASEF activities and seeks to raise public awareness of issues pertaining to Asia-Europe relations through media activities, such as TV documentaries, public lectures, the use of the Internet (the ASEM Infoboard [4]), publication of newsletters and the academic Asia-Europe Journal [5].
ASEF is funded by voluntary contributions from its partner governments and shares the financing of its projects with its civil society partners across Asia and Europe.