28 Years of Walking the Global Streets and a Challenge: ISTEC 1990-2018

Abstract

The intent is to share 28 years of experience of the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC, www.istec.org). The original idea of ISTEC was to use Science and Technology (S&T) as the common language and catalyst for social, cultural, political, and economic development. We envisioned then the use of S&T language for practical Peace Engineering international efforts. ISTEC is also about sharing (information, technology, services) by forming alliances among academia, industry, government agencies, and multilateral organizations. The success of ISTEC is based in Trust, that is: transparency, efficiency, effectiveness, professionalism, competitiveness, competence, knowledge, culture of quality and accountability. ISTEC is action oriented. We intend to share the problems we encountered and identified, the initiatives developed to tackle those problems, our successes and failures, our experience from managing the organization to project development and execution of the different initiatives. Lastly, we want to establish a dialogue under Peace Engineering to address the current and future Global Challenges. Therefore, the specific challenge is for IFEES-GEDC leadership and its membership to create a Peace Engineering Initiative under which concrete efforts can be identified, developed, funded and executed.