Welcome to the Naples Council on World Affairs. Situated on the southwest coast of the Florida Peninsula, our Council is part of the World Affairs Councils of America network, numbering 90 across our nation. We are a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose challenge is to promote better understanding of the issues that face our world today.

The Naples Council is the fifth largest council in the system and is an all-volunteer organization catering to more than 2200 members whose interests in Foreign Affairs are pronounced.  In 2008, it was chosen by the World Affairs Councils of America as the best all-volunteer Council.
 
We are proud to partner with other national organizations, to conduct people-to-people diplomacy, to organize Model United Nations Programs, and to build new community relationships.  We offer an annual lecture series as well as additional speaker programs that bring a group of very distinguished scholars and statesmen before our membership.  Many of our speakers agree to share their knowledge further by also speaking to groups of Collier County high school students as part of our School Outreach program.

Our Flagship Programs offer wonderful opportunities to our members, our schools and our community.  The Great Decisions Program, celebrating 52 years as a grassroots foreign policy education initiative, is run by the Foreign Policy Association in New York City.  The FPA produces an annual briefing book, encompassing eight current event topics, that is used as a guide in discussion groups that reach over 500,000 people nationwide.  In our Council, 430 members participated in 2008 in discussion groups of 25 to 30.

We also sponsor the Academic WorldQuest, designed to expand the worldview of students nationwide.  No other program better illustrates the interconnectivity of understanding, growing, and engaging than AWQ, our national high school competition in world affairs.  We have sent four high school teams to Washington to date to compete with teams from all over the country.
 
The World in Transition, a multi-media educational series, is produced by the Atlanta World Affairs Council/Southern Center for International Studies.  Updated constantly, as our world grows more complex each year, the series covers the globe with essays, maps, graphs, statistics and other factual data.  The program is used by nearly 40,000 teachers and 1.5 million students annually.  The Naples Council has made this program available to Collier County teachers, over 20 of whom have been trained in its use.

The Model United Nations is one of our longest standing and most successful programs, involving students from Collier and Lee County high schools in two days of mock UN proceedings, for which the students prepare for much of the year.  In 2008 there were 14 schools and 250 students participating.
 
The Council is also proud of its Village Assistance Program (VAP).  It was initiated a few years ago to provide modest financial assistance to needy areas in foreign countries. Examples of projects funded by the Council through the VAP are: the construction of thatch-roofed concrete buildings in two Indian villages in the mountains of Mexico to give the village women a common workplace in which to do their traditional embroidery; the supply of medical equipment for a volunteer HIV/AIDS clinic in Jamacia; and the construction of an impressive adult literacy center in a village in Ghana.  In each of these efforts a member of the Council played a key role in organizing and overseeing the project