PIM proudly co-hosted the APEC Voices of the Future 2022, which was held concurrently with APEC 2022. The selected potential youth from 14 APEC member economies participated in the workshops and pitches in alignment with the concept of ‘FUTURE’ as well as exchanged knowledge of Thai culture at PIM. We’ve got some youth representatives to share their thoughts on this event.
APEC Voices of the Future 2022, is an annual program which brings young people and educators from the 14 APEC Participating Economies together, namely Australia, Canada, People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, the United States of America, Vietnam and Thailand, to attend the APEC Summit for the purpose of presenting perspectives and solutions on issues affecting the future of economies in the Asia-Pacific region as well as listening to the executives’ visions from the world’s leading companies.
The delegates participated in Discussion Group workshops to present perspectives and solutions on issues affecting the future of the economy in the Asia-Pacific region, under the theme “Open. Connect. Balance.”
In addition, everyone engaged in knowledge sharing on Thai culture through cooking, making beverages, learning about arts and traditional clothing, playing Go (board game), and learning about personality development to build confidence.
We’ve got some youth representatives to share their thoughts on this event.
Kaylen Hojdelewicz from Waikato University, New Zealand
“I’m really honored that I got selected to present so just really honored to be here and it’s really nice in Thailand. It’s very hot but it’s very beautiful. It’s nice to meet everybody here and everyone’s really friendly and really helpful and supportive. And I like about the culture.
I like the experience here in PIM. Today we make some new friends, learn some new dance, learn some new crafts and some new language skills learn how to present things as well and how to work together as a team and come up with solutions. It was cool doing with the group talks as well. We got to present and I found it’s really interesting to got to talk about things that we haven’t thought about yet and we work for all different economies together and then I got to go on the stage and talk a little bit about tourism and sustainability so we talked about indigenous sustainability and we got some cool feedback and it was really interesting things.”
Michael Peeler from Furman University, USA
“It’s a very humbling experience to get to represent my country and like be the face of it to someone else. I really enjoy getting to meet all of the other delegates and I’m really honored that I get to represent the US and be their impression of the United States to APEC.
I’d really enjoyed my time at PIM it’s been great I like getting to talk with or listen to some of your professors talk and also we did a presentation about some policies that we’d like to know that was really fun and then getting to do a Thai dance and some craft here it’s really great. I’ve really enjoyed it and I’m glad I’ve got to come visit PIM and did that.
I really like all of the people that I’ve met at PIM. Getting to take the dance class they all seem very talented and I was very impressed about how wonderful the dancing was and all of the people from PIM that I’ve talked to have been great. I’ve got to speak with a couple students that were at PIM at our group today and they were very impressive.”
Garrendir Kaur Shanna from Yale-NUS College, Singapore
“The cultural activity was very fun. I did a lot of dance when I was younger so I wanted to learn how to do this kind of dance also and It’s very exciting. I think we get to do a lot of thing and talk to people from all over the world like people from Mexico, people from US, so I think that’s quite fun and interesting.
The earlier we did a policy discussion and I work on financial inclusion and I thought it was actually very meaningful because I got to understand other countries issues with regards to financial inclusion so Singapore are very small but urban country so we don’t have the same problems that larger countries like Thailand or Taiwan have, so I think that was really interesting and then also like just these kinds of culture I did are very fun because you can’t find this outside of Thailand.”
Andres Vivanco from Prepa Tec Mty, Mexico
“It’s probably the best experience. It was super different like, it was awesome to get to know the different universities in different cities, different continents. It’s very different from Mexico. It was a very enriching experience to know about everything here.
I did Thai cooking and it was a great experience, very different flavors but a very nice experience yet. I got that it doesn’t matter the flavor or like where you from. It’s about sharing the experiences with the whole world like people from everywhere to learn about them and them about you.”