International FIRST

Jeffrey,

Thank you for the effort to help the FIRST initiative by way of this introduction to Terje.

Terje,

Thank you for the opportunity to present FIRST to the international community.

I don't know if you have any familiarity with our program. The following link is a three-minute introduction narrated by Morgan Freemen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QyM9WTF18.

I did take the opportunity this afternoon to watch a few of your talks and interviews. I was happy to learn that you seem to be as much of a Shimon Perez fan as I am. He is one of the earliest international leaders to personally embrace FIRST as a tool of international diplomacy. He asked me to help build FIRST in the middle east more than a decade ago and I am proud to say that there are now hundred for FIRST teams active in Israel and its neighbors. If you have the opportunity, I am sure that you would enjoy hearing his personal perspective.

While FIRST now has teams operating in more than 80 countries, our international growth still remains a "grass roots" effort with little top-down support or even awareness from most governments around the world.

I will be in China next week as part of a U.S National Academy of Engineering delegation to a joint meeting of the U.S., Chinese, and Royal Academies of Engineering. My talk will focus on the possibility of creating an international structure that will partner with the National Academies to prepare young people to deal with the Grand Challenges that will face the next generation. The goal of my presentation will be to encourage all of the National Academies to embrace FIRST in the same way that the International Olympics has been traditionally leveraged.

I look forward to speaking with you as soon as possible so that I can appropriately prepare for the opportunity that you have so racious offered.

With great respect,

Dean