“So far, China has signed cultural cooperation agreements with 149 countries and 485 implementation plans for cultural exchange and cooperation with 97 countries to promote mutual trust and friendship,” Vice Minister of Culture Zhao Shaohua said at an international congress on culture and sustainable development.

For centuries, Chinese people have promoted a worldwide value of harmony in their social lives and appreciated morality and justice in political ethics, Zhao said at the three-day conference that opened on Wednesday in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang province. The event was the first of its kind to be organized by UNESCO since 1998.

Enhancing cooperation between Chinese culture and different cultures and civilizations of the world is important for mutual understanding and learning, as well as the maintenance of world peace and harmony, she said.

In recent years, China has built high-level cultural exchange mechanisms with the United States, Britain, Europe and Russia, and deepened more than 10 bilateral cultural coordination systems, the vice minister said.

Source: China Daily USA

The online survey was completed by nearly 15,000 of the 330,000 people who entered the global competition, aimed at encouraging more young people to visit Australia under the country’s Working Holiday Maker (WHM) program.

Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said the results demonstrated that the ‘Best Jobs in the World’ competition was already having a positive impact promoting Australia as a desirable holiday destination amongst its key target market and, importantly, was also increasing awareness and interest in Australia’s Working Holiday Maker program.

“Whilst much of the attention has focused on the six dream jobs, we shouldn’t forget the real purpose of this campaign – to inspire more young people to come down under by increasing awareness and uptake of our Working Holiday Maker program. Early indications, supported by these survey results, indicate that we’re ticking those boxes,” Mr McEvoy said.

Eight out of ten (81%) respondents said that they had already discussed Australia as a working destination with friends and family as a direct result of the ‘Best Jobs’ competition.

A similar number (78%) of people said they had already researched Australia as a working holiday destination, with 77% of them saying they’d also suggested Australia to others as a working holiday destination.

Six out of ten (61%) said they had already visited the Australian immigration website (www.immi.gov.au) for more information on Australia’s working holiday maker program.

The 18 finalists – three for each of the six dream jobs – were unveiled on May 15, with the six winners due to be announced on June 21. Tourism Australia received more than 620,000 applications from more than 330,000 people in 196 countries, with 46,000 applicants uploading their 30-second video.

Since the competition was launched, Tourism Australia’s working holiday maker Facebook page has nearly trebled from 150,000 to 435,000 fans with young people around the world actively seeking information about a working holiday in Australia. This builds on Tourism Australia’s more than four million general Facebook fans – the largest destination Facebook site in the world.

Mr McEvoy said the campaign was already generating commercial benefits for the Australian tourism industry.

STA Travel, one of the campaign’s key partners, has already reported significant increases in the sale of youth travel packages in its three largest markets, which it has attributed directly to the competition – 100 per cent year-on-year increase in the USA, 42 per cent in Germany and 17 per cent in UK, during the campaign period.

Mr McEvoy said around a third of the people who’d initially entered the competition had agreed to receive additional information and offers about holidays in Australia, while Australian based backpacker operators Base and YHA have seen a significant spike in bookings.

“Tourism Australia will continue to capitalise on the enormous interest in this campaign by working with our commercial partners such as STA Travel and Virgin Australia to sell holidays and working holidays to many of those who missed out on one of the six best jobs,” he said.

Source: Invest in Australia

As part of a nationwide, government sponsored, multilingual initiative, CIEE places program participants in public schools (primary or secondary) in the region of Castilla-La Mancha, made famous by Cervantes’ Don Quixote and the “Man from La Mancha.”

Participants will spend 12 hours per week volunteering at the school. As compensation for their hard work, they will receive: cost-free accommodation, three hours/week of personal Spanish-language instruction, and job placement assistance should they be interested in taking on work outside of school.

Participants of CIEE’s Teach in Spain programs will also receive:

• Entrance to Spain on a flexible, tourist visa that may have the option to extend if you want to stay longer
• Pre-departure advising
• Volunteer position in a Spanish public school
• Visa paperwork procurement and assistance
• Pre-departure online orientation to prepare for departure
• On-site group orientation with introduction to Spain, workshops on teaching, cross-cultural training, and teaching methodologies
• iNext travel insurance
• Support services for the duration of the program
• Continued connection to fellow participants and CIEE’s global alumni network of Teach Abroad participants, including access to professional development and networking opportunities

Now is the time to apply to Teach in Spain: Castilla-La Mancha for a fall 2013 departure!  Deadline to apply is June 15.

Visit www.ciee.org/teach/spain/volunteer to apply.

More than 25,800 Irish people received working holiday visas for Australia last year; 4,500 Irish-born citizens became permanent residents of Australia; and 645 were given student visas, said Niall Burgess of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

In Canada, 6,680 Irish people were given temporary visas, more than 6,000 were given working visas and 5,350 were given working holiday visas. [...continue reading]

Source: Irish Times

Heron, 19, took what in the U.S. remains an unconventional route to college by delaying enrollment one year to work and gain life experience, a concept known as a gap year

Living in a foreign land where she did not speak the language helped her develop a new-found confidence, she said.

“I’m better able to think for myself,” Heron said. “I didn’t even know there was another way to think and do things until I went to Ecuador.”

As students are finalizing plans to enroll in college next fall, advocates of the gap year are touting the advantages of taking a year to focus on personal development.

No one tracks the number of students nationally who opt for a gap year, sometimes called a bridge year. Estimates of students who defer college for one year – for whatever reason – range from less than 2 percent to more than 10 percent, said Nina Hoe, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania who is studying the effect of gap years.

“This has the potential to be a very, very important part of our understanding of college readiness and success,” Hoe said.

Contrast the American rates to those in Norway, Denmark and Turkey, where more than 50 percent of students take a year off before college, according to the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education in Oslo.

Changing view of the bridge year

Two negative perceptions about gap years prevail in the United States: Taking a year off before college is only for affluent students, and doing so sets a student back because they step off the high school-to-college “conveyor belt,” said Abby Falik, who in 2009 founded Global Citizen Year, nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif. that supports gap-year choices. Heron was among the 80 percent of students in the Global Citizen Year program that receive financial aid. One-third receive full scholarships from the program, which seeks students with strong leadership potential.

Falik said colleges will be key to changing perceptions and behaviors about what she calls bridge years. About one-third of college freshmen don’t return to the same institution for a second year, according to ACT Inc., an education testing company in Iowa City, Iowa.

The factors driving this are complex, but Falik said it suggests the U.S. education system pushes students into college without the necessary “focused sense of purpose, independence, self-confidence, grit and resilience.”

Few colleges in the U.S. formally encourage students to take a year off for personal development, Falik said.

Princeton University has been among the early adopters. It offers full scholarships for a bridge year program that will serve up to 35 students this year. At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, up to seven students receive $7,500 scholarships to pursue a gap year of their own design.

“We’re looking for resourceful students who can think on their feet and are open-minded,” said Jakelin Bonilla, UNC Global Gap Year Fellowship coordinator.

Sometimes its the parents who need convincing. Nancy Anderson felt her anxiety rise as she realized her daughter was serious about spending nine months in Senegal before college.

Anderson had reservations about her daughter veering from the direct path to college her two older sisters had taken. Not to mention that her parents feared for their youngest child’s safety in Africa. But a visit four months into Erica Anderson’s time in Senegal left her mother sold on the value of a gap year.

“Erica was our tour guide, interpreter, the money person, the haggler. It was such a role-reversal, and it was terribly impressive. You looked at this young woman and you thought, ‘Oh my gosh, look at what she can do,’” Nancy Anderson said.

Time to figure out goals

Erica Anderson, now 19, felt she needed the time away from school. She had been a driven student with a 4.0 grade-point-average at Ames High School in Iowa.

Anderson deferred admission to the University of Wisconsin in Madison for one year because she said she wanted time to think, reasses and gain real-life experience.

She left high school with illusions of saving the world one person at a time in a far-away land. She returned with a renewed focus on making a difference in her home country, after she saw foreign aid groups struggle to make an impact in Senegal because of cultural barriers.

“Before, I was very interested in working internationally. I could envision myself in some nonprofit,” Anderson said. “Now, I’ve re-oriented myself to do work in the U.S.”

Source: USA Today

Source and Ful Report: European Travel Commission

CTC identified the youth travel market as a great opening for long-term tourism growth in Canada. [...read complete report]

Source: The Sacramento Bee & Canadian Tourism Commission

The agreement was signed by Secretary for Labour & Welfare Matthew Cheung and French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius at Government House in the presence of Chief Executive CY Leung today.

Under the agreement, young people in Hong Kong and France can gain living and working experience while they are travelling. It will also boost bilateral ties between the two jurisdictions.

Two hundred participants from each side annually will be allowed to stay up to a year in France or Hong Kong on holiday and take up employment to finance their stay.

It is the eighth bilateral working holiday scheme Hong Kong has set up with other places. So far 30,000 youngsters have benefited from the endeavour.

The Hong Kong Immigration Department or French Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau will issue the working-holiday visas.

Source: news.gov.hk

Source: The Economist

The purpose of these awards is to acknowledge institutions, organizations, and individuals who are creating initiatives to move the field of international education forward, and to commend leaders in the community for their efforts to go beyond the conventional.

We are proud that among the 2013 finalists are the following WYSE Work Abroad member organisations:

• African Impact
• CIEE

The winner in two award categories, the Innovative Student Video and People’s Choice, are, unlike the other Innovation Award categories, determined by a public, online poll. Voting will take place until May 29, 2013 at 11:59PM CST, so be sure to cast your  vote and help find this year’s wonderful winners:

• People’s Choice Voting App: http://bit.ly/11AWUms
• Student Video Voting App: http://bit.ly/10Av8Ka

All the 2013 winners will then be announced at the GoAbroad Reception during NAFSA Annual Conference & Expo in St. Louis.

Source: GoAbroad