Leadership Missions FAQs
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What countries or organizations have hosted study tours?
What is a leadership mission?
A leadership mission is an overseas fact-finding visit to a city, country, or international organization by a national leadership delegation of the World Affairs Council movement.
The World Affairs Councils of America is the largest non-profit international affairs organization in the United States with 86 councils around the country, 28 national and international affiliates, and 484,000 members and participants.
What is the purpose?
The main purposes are to get to know the people, the issues, and the problems of the city, the country, or the organization first-hand and to establish a much greater connection between the country and a well-informed and influential part of the American public. These trips are for meeting and discussion purposes, not for sight-seeing.
Better knowledge of the host country and its issues means better programs back home at the local council level. These include country-specific information channeled through more speaker invitations, radio and television programs, council publications, curriculum materials, teachers' workshops, business roundtables, conferences, and travel programs.
The world affairs council movement prides itself on its independence. It wishes to confront the world's issues directly, not through the prisms of official foreign policy, interest group ideology, or the national media. The movement strongly believes strongly in people-to-people diplomacy and is one of the preeminent organizations in the United States in that field.
Who goes?
Delegations are made up of generally 10 national leaders of the council system, i.e. presidents of councils, national board members, local chairpersons, program directors, and local board members. Trips usually last between 7-10 days.
Who pays?
The host government or organization covers the expenses inside the country. The hosts sometimes pay the international airfare to the country as well. Hosts have been the ministry of foreign affairs, the national information service, local foundations, or local non-profit organizations.
What do the delegations do?
Delegations hold a wide variety of discussions and make numerous site visits. Typically discussions include a session at the foreign ministry and sometimes with defense, education, economics, privatization, and others. Commonly delegations meet with the media, business associations, think tanks, foundations, and universities. Sessions are largely short briefings followed by extensive question-and-answer periods.
Site visits often include industrial facilities, military installations, development projects, and rural settings. Delegations are usually hosted once by the American Embassy and sometimes pay a courtesy call on the national president.
How do the hosts benefit?
What the delegation learns is communicated to the members throughout the United States through a trip report, local programming, and council conferences and workshops.
Local programming on the host country increased through 80 world affairs councils as a result of each tour. Perspectives gained on tours appear in publications, on radio and television, at conferences, in national foreign policy discussion publications, and in educational materials which we prepare for classrooms.
These visits also lead to the development of long-term working relationships between counterpart organizations in the host country and the World Affairs Council movement. The working relationships produce joint projects, conferences, professional exchanges, speakers’ visits to the United States, intern exchanges, publications, or the like. The tours sometimes lead to increased business interest from the some of the 2,000 corporations which financially support the world affairs council movement around the country.
National delegation visits often then lead to follow-on by local councils. Many local councils have educational travel programs for their members. Leadership missions often start a series of trips from around the council world. For local trips, the travellers normally pay their own way.
What countries or organizations have hosted study tours?
Over the last ten years, the world affairs council system has taken leadership delegations to Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Morocco, Lebanon, Kuwait, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Brazil, Canada, NATO, the European Union, and Poland. Several countries have issued repeat invitations.