About AYF

What is AYF?

The Asian Youth Forum (AYF) is a college-aged students and young people’s network organization founded in 1999 by Professor Kip Cates of Tottori University (Japan) together with the help of language educators and academic professionals who have been actively part of the Pan Asian Conference (PAC) and are members of international language (English) associations in the Asian region.

The idea of the AYF is to bring together college and university students and young people from all over the Asian region to an international convention to meet with other youth and educators and provide them a venue where they could share their ideas, views and knowledge on culture, language, leadership and social and global issues and also learn from others. 

 
Since its inception, AYF has been focused to the following objectives:

Allow the participants to learn and understand each other’s basic language and to put emphasis on the use of the English language as an important (international) language and tool for communication in order to properly convey one’s ideas to another.

Bring together the youth of Asia to an exchange opportunity to learn about each other’s culture, values, perceptions and history in order to bridge cultural gap and foster an environment of awareness, understanding and tolerance amidst differences.

Provide a venue for the participants to freely discuss specific social and global issues that concern the youth in Asia today and understand how it affects them
Provide the participants the opportunity and venue to plan for a solution which can be applied in their communities upon return home to resolve their chosen concern issue.

Provide the participants training on business-life skills and help them prepare to become responsible global citizens and international leaders. 
 
Since then, the AYF has been organizing international summits for college-aged students and young people every two years, which are held simultaneously with the PAC. AYF and PAC is organized and supported by the Language Teaching Associations in the Asian Region such as the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), Thai TESOL, Far Eastern English Language Teachers' Association (FEELTA) and Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association (BELTA) to name a few.

 
Past AYF Summits have been held in South Korea (AYF1,1999), Japan (AYF2, 2001), Taiwan (AYF3, 2003), Russia (AYF4, 2004), Thailand (AYF5,2006), Japan (AYF 6, 2008) 

The 7th Asian Youth Forum International Summit (AYF 7)

AYF 7 is a week-long event for the youth consisting of academic seminars, intercultural workshops, social events and interpersonal exchanges.   

This international exchange program aims to promote international understanding, intercultural communication and leadership skills through the medium of English-as-an-international-language. 

The AYF 7 will be held as part of a Pan-Asian Conference (PAC 7) on language teaching to be hosted by the Philippine Association of Language Teachers (PALT)

Who are the participants?

Over 100 student and youth delegates from Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea will attend the AYF 7 this year.

o       Participation is open to university or college-aged students/youth (aged 18 – 25)

o       Participants are chosen based on their English proficiency and skills

o       Participants are chosen from the Asian region only and are country national/citizen from the region

o       Participants are chosen based on how they have sincerely expressed their interest in Asian peoples, cultures and issues