This project sought to deepen the ties of trust between Myanmar and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries by promoting dialogue between a group of opinion leaders from ASEAN and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Myanmar. Originally, it was planned to have a study group comprising opinion leaders from ASEAN and Myanmar spearhead activities. But while there was some appreciation both at home and abroad for the resumption of dialogue between the SPDC and the NLD, the SPDC consistently forbade NLD representatives to take part in the project. As a result the Fund was obliged to emphasize dialogue between ASEAN opinion leaders and representatives of the SPDC alone. Under these constraints, the following activities were carried out during the three years of the project.
In the first year an international conference, "Myanmar in the Twenty-first Century," was held in Yangon. About 10 cabinet-level representatives of the Myanmar government, including the first secretary of the SPDC, 140 or so Myanmarese opinion leaders, and about 10 experts from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore attended. Discussion ranged from Myanmar and globalization to the information technology (IT) revolution, traditional culture, development of human resources, and security strategy.
In the second year an international conference on globalization and the digital divide was held in Yangon. The approximately 150 participants from Myanmar included SPDC executives, high government officials, scholars, researchers, and business leaders. Also attending were eight experts from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. In the third year the Myanmar central government and the Mandalay local government cohosted two international conferences. The themes were "Interaction for Progress: Myanmar and the Knowledge Economy" and "The Internet Revolution and Society in Myanmar." The participants included SPDC executives, high government officials, scholars, researchers, and business leaders from Myanmar, along with experts from other Southeast Asian countries.
Discussion of such abstract themes as economic globalization, the IT revolution, and the knowledge economy gave Myanmarese government representatives (especially SPDC executives) and opinion leaders a greater grasp of the policy, institutional, strategic, human-resource development, and other issues related to economic globalization and the IT revolution confronting Myanmar. The project also served to raise awareness of the need to promote greater understanding between ASEAN and Myanmar.