CYIL 2012

THE PRAGUE STUDENT SUMMIT

THE PRAGUE STUDENT SUMMIT

What is the Prague Student Summit? The Prague Student Summit (or the PSS) is a prestigious educational project offering Czech high school and university students a unique insight into the world of diplomacy and international relations. The project’s origins date back to the mid 1990s. Starting only as the Prague Model United Nations, the project has received support from both academic and diplomatic circles, has drawn top-tier attention from the media and has grown over the years into the current project – the Prague Student Summit. The key idea of the PSS is to simulate the operations of the three most important international organizations: UN, NATO and EU. Hundreds of students from all over the Czech Republic act as real representatives of the respective countries and as such try to solve current issues in international affairs. Our goal is to help students broaden their professional skills and build self-confidence while remaining attentive and modest in manner. Our students are hence not only interested in the world that surrounds them, but are also able to listen to others, think and act independently, argue clearly and factually for their case and swiftly respond to new challenges. With its emphasis on alternative educational methods, the project represents a most appropriate complement to the education provided by high schools and universities – it focuses on those aspects of personal development that are often neglected by the Czech educational system. Above all, these aspects include assertive behaviour, reasoning capabilities and rhetorical skills and the ability to work efficiently with information resources. History of the PSS The idea of the Prague Student Summit came to the minds of a group of students from University of Economics in Prague, who tried to simulate the conference of the UN Security Council in 1995. About fifteen of them then started preparing a more ambitious project – they set up programmes, arranged the flow of the project, and prepared the project’s newspaper, Chronicle. Their idea began to come to fruition in 1996, when the first year of “Prague Model UN” took place. It was great a success and the organisers decided to continue with the project in the following years. In 1997 Association for Development of International Cooperation was founded and later renamed to Association for International Affairs. The Association has been organising the Prague Student Summit ever since. In the second year of the project, more than 60 delegates from all over the Czech Republic took part and during the following years more and more students participated.

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