As part of their Research Education projects, some RI boys participated in the Doors to Diplomacy competition sponsored by the U. S. Department of State. The competition is an educational challenge to encourage middle school and high school students around the world to produce web projects that teach others about the importance of international affairs and diplomacy.

Chua Cheng Xun, Wu Zeyang and Gao Bo embarked on a project entitled ‘Review of the Past, Present and Future of ASEAN: Is ASEAN Way the key to regional and global security?’ They explored various issues within ASEAN, critically analyzing the successes and failures of ASEAN’s approach in resolving regional and global crises.

The team won the Gold Award for their effort. But more importantly, the members gained a better understanding of the importance of world peace. The members also shared that,“We learnt to appreciate the Research Education curriculum that has been drawn out from Rafflesians since Secondary One. During the course of the project, we discovered many common characteristics between our Doors to Diplomacy project and RE curriculum. We find these characteristics very useful and we feel fortunate to be exposed to this type of learning.”

The team would like to thank all their interviewees, namely:
Mr Aarom Maniam
Dr Ian Storey
Ambassador Ong Keng Yong
Ambassador Rodolfo Severino
Dr Christopher B. Roberts