AES

AES’s activities have had the purpose to initiate a new generation of young persons in academic debating and to improve on argumentation and style for advanced debaters. Concerning debating programs, AES has focused a lot on developing the World Schools style of debating through participation at international competitions, organizing several events aimed at the development and better understanding

of this format, and also by benefitting from international trainers’ expertise ( Jonathan Bailey, John Wickham and Lewis Eckerslike to name a few). Without a doubt, the greatest achievement of AES is organizing the first international debate tournament in Romania on the World Schools debating format, entitled “Fiat! The competition has already had six editions, where we had debaters and trainers coming in from the United Kingdom, Germany, Czech Republic, Republic of Moldova , Macedonia, Slovakia and Zimbabwe. We wish that “Fiat Debate!”, the first and oldest international debate tournament in Romania would grow more and more in the following years and that we will be able to host as many foreign teams as we can. Following the same direction, AES’s trainers are open to any invitation coming from Romanian debate clubs that wish to learn this format. At the beginning of 2004, the AES debating club has been invited by His Royal Highness Prince Radu of Romania of Hohenzollern Veringen to initiate a public debate at the Elisabeth Palace, regarding “Society and Youth”, after which Royal Family members have been impressed by the qualities of the participants, which led to futhter meetings and dialogue between us. Beginning with March 2004, AES has initiated a campaign to promote debate in the Prahova county, organizing public debates in the most important high schools and institutions from Prahova. Afterwards, AES has collaborated with ARDOR (Romanian Association for Debate, Oratory and Rhetoric ) to promote debating in Bucharest’s major high schools, including “St Sava” National College, “Mihai Viteazul” National College, “Tudor Vianu” High School, “Iulia Hasdeu” High School and “ Stefan Odobleja” High School. Moreover, surpassing the debating and competitional sphere, AES is very active in the local community, receiving a lot of invitations from the municipality and the business community from Prahova to participate to several activities concerning themes such as intercultural exchanges and implication in decision-making mechanisms.