The 6^th ASEAN Foundation Model ASEAN Meeting (AFMAM) 2020 kicked off on 4 September.

Delegates at the meeting (Photo: ASEAN Foundation/VNA)

The event is being held by the ASEAN Foundation, with the support of the ASEAN Secretariat, the National Youth Council of Singapore, the Global Citizen Education Group, the ASEAN-Norway cooperation project on capacity building for reducing plastic pollution ASEANO and Model United Nations (MUN) Inc.

The programme, reformatted into webinar instead of taking place in Hanoi as originally outlined, sees a cohort of 96 undergraduate students and faculty members for the next four days learn about ASEAN’s decision-making processes and develop their leadership skills in an ASEAN Plus One setting.

In order to deliver the best possible AFMAM experience to the delegates, the programme’s most popular activities, such as the role-playing and meeting simulations, the expert-led talk show and the cultural night, are now in online format.

Furthermore, an initiative called “Youth Initiative Competition: To Blue the Blue” is also being implemented as a complementary event to the 6th AFMAM 2020.

Co-organised by the Committee of Viet Nam Model ASEAN Meeting and ASEAN Foundation, the competition aims to challenge Vietnamese youth to creatively address the issue of marine life protection and preservation in ASEAN. The competition has been running for a month and will announce its winners on 5 September.

As in the previous years, the 6th AFMAM 2020 is designed to support this year’s ASEAN Chairmanship and its key priorities. This is evidenced by the selection of the programme theme which emphasises on the importance of partnership and collaborative effort – two key words that are deeply embedded in the overarching theme of Viet Nam’s 2020 ASEAN Chairmanship, “Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN”.

“Just like the 2020 ASEAN mantra ‘Cohesive and Responsive ASEAN’, it is only through solidarity, unity, and cooperation can we manage to circumvent the seemingly insurmountable obstacles ahead,” said the Executive Director of ASEAN Foundation Dr. Yang Mee Eng in her remark in the opening ceremony of the 6th AFMAM 2020.

Since its inception in 2015, AFMAM has offered its participants an authentic ASEAN experience through realistic role-playing and meeting simulations that invite youth to be part of the region’s discussions on topics relevant to ASEAN in real-life.

In the last five years, the programme has received over 7,000 applications, directly empowering more than 600 undergraduate students and faculty members.

Source: VNA