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2002 Mexico

MEXICO’S APEC YEAR

The Voices of the Future program resumed after a year of break due
to the September 11 attacks. US Secretary of State, H.E. Colin Powell,
and former US Secretary of Education, H. E. Richard Riley, worked with
Mexico President H. E. Vicente Fox to ensure the program received the full SARS EPIDEMIC
cooperation of the APEC host committee. The annual Voices of the Future

program was held in conjunction with the APEC Leaders’ Meeting in
Los Cabos, Mexico.

2003

The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) started in Guangdong Province, China and soon
spread to many APEC Member Economies. The deadly disease took the lives of many people around the world.
Because all the participating campuses in the Americas cancelled student travel to Asia as a
cautionary measure, the VTM Foundation chose not to convene the Voices program at the
APEC Leaders’ Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand in October 2003.

Leaders from the 21 APEC Member Economies gathering for the official group
photograph during the APEC Leaders’ Week 2002 in Los Cabos, Mexico.

The VTM Foundation’s organizing team included the Jesse Helms Center
Foundation and Furman University’s Richard Riley Institute, and Monterrey TEC’s
Virtual University and its Santa Catarina Campus.

At the event, the first-ever United States-Mexico joint multimedia classroom on
Asia-Pacific trade and education connected Mexican and American students and
educators to schools around the Pacific Rim.

The use of technology enabled the US and Mexican students in Monterrey the
opportunity to work with and learn from students and teachers from across the

Pacific at the Auckland University of Technology and King’s College in Auckland,
New Zealand and the University of Brunei Darussalam in Brunei.

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