THE SASAKAWA PEACE FOUNDATION

Asian Renaissance： Capacity Building for Future Leaders in Southeast Asia

12,600,000 yen [Grant project]
Institute for Policy Research (Malaysia)

Early members of the ASEAN have achieved unparalleled economic success and developed very stable societies under strong leadership in each country. However, for further success and development in these countries, capacity building for future leaders is necessary to respond to improvements of quality in political, economical, and society systems, and improvements in flexibility toward changes in the surrounding environment. The project targets selected ASEAN countries where parliamentary democracies have been established, and aims to nurture future leaders in these countries by selecting promising young leaders in political, governmental, economical and academic areas in cooperation with intellectuals and politicians from ASEAN, Japan, US and Europe, and giving them the opportunity to learn basic cultures. Both open recruitment and recommendation systems will be applied to the selection of future leaders, and clear selection criteria will be disclosed for transparency during the selection processes.

Activities of the project will be as follows.

Preparatory meetings with a core expert group (August, 2006 in Kuala Lumpur)
Preparatory meetings will be held and Dr. Anwar Ibrahim, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, and Mr. Sukhumbhand Paribatra, a former deputy minister of Thailand, will develop selection criteria and prepare training programs. Participants and guest speakers will be selected based on career, English speaking ability, and age in both open recruitment and recommendation systems.
Workshops (September, 2006)
Once daily discussion with experts will be a main structure of the training programs. Contents of lectures will be as follows:
(a) Philosophy: Western thinking and Asian thinking including Tagore and Tenshin Okakura.
(b) Negotiation: Role playing will be applied to improve negotiation skills.
(c) Leadership transformation: Transformation from thought to practice will be learned in theory and in practice.
(d) Vision creation: Processes of the creation of visions will be learned by participating in role playing to present inauguration speeches and by participating in discussions.

(First year of a 5-year project)