The idea behind AIESEC started in the 1930s, when representatives from schools across Europe exchanged information about various programs and schools that specialized in business and economics. Students were carrying out internships in other countries, but mostly on their own initiative, and it all came to a standstill with the onslaught of World War II.[3] In 1944, though, the neutral Scandinavian countries were still exchanging: in Stockholm, Bertil Hedberg (official at the Stockholm School of Economics) and the two students Jaroslav Zich of Czechoslovakia and Stanislas Callens of Belgium founded AIESE, the predecessor of AIESEC,[3] which was officially founded in 1948. At the time, the mission was “to expand the understanding of a nation by expanding the understanding of the individuals, changing the world one person at a time.”[3] In 1949, 89 students participated in the so-called "Stockholm Congress", the first of many exchange programs.[4] In the late 1950s, AIESEC/Europe reached out to the United States and established contact with Yale University and Columbia Business School to see if either or both would help establish AIESEC in the United States. The result was that they sent three students (Perry Wurst, Norm Barnett and Stephen Keiley) on an exploratory mission to the annual International Conference in Cologne, Germany, in February 1959. Upon their return home, these three students set up AIESEC chapters at both Yale and Columbia. In the summer of 1959, AIESEC/US exchanged twelve traineeships. The following year, AIESEC/US was expanded to six more colleges and exchanged more than thirty traineeships. Also AIESEC/US put forward the nomination of Morris Wolf to be the first General Secretary. He was elected as such and was part of establishing the first permanent international office for AIESEC in Geneva, Switzerland in 1960. He also contributed to AIESEC expanding to Ghana and Nigeria, And later Cameroon in 1958 in the city of Yaounde thereby establishing a beachhead for further expansion in Africa and opening the way for expansion to other continents. The following year, 1961, it was turned into a Headquarter with the key mission to expand AIESEC. The first Secretary General was Victor Loewenstein, who spearheaded the expansion of the organization into South America. Soon, AIESEC became popular: by the end of 1960, 2467 exchanges were reported, and 4232 by the end of 1970. A landmark in AIESEC history was the “International Theme Programme” that officially established all international, regional, and local seminars on specific topics, which in time grew to be a guideline for future AIESEC generations.[4] In the following decades, debated topics were International Trade, Management Education, Sustainable development, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Corporate Social Responsibility.[4] In the 1990s, intranets called Insight were established to facilitate networking
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 01:43:19 +0000