JOIN IDEA and take advantage of numerous potential funding and
development opportunities!
The International Debate Education Association (IDEA) was founded in 1994 with the goal of encouraging and enabling young people to become active citizens in an open society. Through debate, students express their opinions, gain self-confidence, and meet and discuss important issues. What started as a small experiment in 1994 has now grown to include over 60,000 students and 12,000 teachers in 34 member countries worldwide. For these participants, debate has become an essential ingredient of a democratic society: it has enabled them to give voice to their ideas and feelings.
IDEA supports and promotes development of debate programs globally through creation of debate curricula, training for debaters, coaches and teachers, facilitating international debate exchanges. IDEA actively pursues various funding opportunities (primarily in EU and US) aiming at supporting debate.
In order to become eligible for numerous funding opportunities, IDEA often needs to demonstrate that its network of members is present in the countries which a priority area for a given funder. This membership base may include debate associations (national, regional or local), schools and universities as well as individual students.
IDEA is therefore inviting debate organizations from all over the world to join our organization and become eligible for a number of potential development opportunities. If you are a debate association, a high school, university or other organization (officially recognized or not) that participates in or is just interested in debate, you can become IDEA member for as little as 75 Euro or 90 USD. As part of your membership package you will receive a free subscription to either IDEBATE or Controversia (IDEA's academic journal of Debate and Democratic Renewal, which comes out twice a year), use of IDEA's members logo and ability to advertise
your membership in IDEA as well as possible inclusion in grant proposals that IDEA submits to different funders (upon your approval). In order to learn more about different membership options, please feel free to look at: http://www.idebate.org/members.php or contact IDEA's Executive Director, Jurate Motiejunaite at jmotiejunaite@idebate.org.
IDEA is currently exploring a possibility of applying for a grant from the European Commission to to support the functioning of associations active in the field of education and training at the European level. The details of the call for proposals are available at:
•http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/calls/2606/index_en.html
Under the above mentioned call IDEA would like to expand its membership base to new countries in the EU, particularly: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. If you represent a national, regional or local educational association from one of the above countries and would like to participate in the exciting and challenging process of developing a debate program in your community, region or country, please contact Jurate Motiejunaite in order to join IDEA and discuss the details of the proposal to the European Commission. The deadline for the applications to the EC under the current call for proposals is 31st July and we would need to receive your membership application by 21st July at the latest.
Please send your emails to: sdekieviet[at]idebate.org
(replace [at] with @)
Best regards,
Sanne de Kieviet
Management Assistant IDEA NL
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
phone: +31(0)206927299
[sursa european-youth-exchanges]
