International Debate Education Association

Background

During the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, debate coaches based in the United States trained teachers in Eastern Europe to use debate methodologies in their classrooms through various programs. In 1999, some of these programs joined to create the International Debate Education Association, an independent membership organization which would coordinate debate clubs, national-level debate organizations, debate schools, and individuals interested in debate. In December 2001, the association was registered as a nonprofit organization in New York City. ^{1 2}

Financially, the organization is supported by the Open Society Foundations, a private grantmaking foundation created and funded by billionaire financier and liberal philanthropist George Soros. In that vein, the organization’s stated aim is “to promote mutual understanding and democracy globally by supporting discussion and active citizenship locally.” ¹

In the decades since its founding, the association has expanded beyond eastern Europe to engage with debate groups and organizations in countries including Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Bangladesh, India, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Italy, and the United Kingdom. As of 2022, the association claims to associate with over 1,500 debate clubs in 84 countries, and to have drawn over 4,000 participants to its Association’s Youth Forum events. ¹

New Global Learning

On March 1, 2022, the International Debate Education Association launched a new two-year project, “New Global Learning – Youth Workers as Global Learning Facilitators (NGL),” co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union. According to the association’s description of the project, NGL is intended to help “Young people…advocating for a greener, sustainable future, women’s, LGBTQ, and minority rights, an end to discrimination, and wealth inequality” educate their peers who “question or even oppose those movements” and who, the association claims, “have more access to fake news and echo chambers perpetuating specific points of view than they do to education that tackles the local and global issues that are relevant now.” ³

To that end, the program provides training modules for activists, “thinking models,” and digital resources to European youth. Particularly, the description page for the project emphasizes youth in “lower-income EU countries or countries where populist policies have a strong influence on education.” ³

People

Aaron Fishbone

Aaron Fishbone is the president of the board of the International Debate Education Association and has over a period of five years served variously as a trainer and curriculum committee member within the association’s network. Additionally, Fishbone is the communications director of two Bratislava-based electric mobility companies: GreenWay and Voltia. ⁴

Previously, Fishbone was a member of the board of the District of Columbia Urban Debate League; employee in the Mayor’s Office of the City of Seattle, Washington; Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Germany; founding director of the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League summer institute in the summer of 2015; and a member of the the curriculum committee of the Debating Threats to Democracy Program in Bratislava in March 2017. ⁴

Gedmine Marija Rackiene

Gedmine Marija Rackiene is the vice president of the board of the International Debate Education Association as well as a board member of the Educational Debate Center Lithuania. Formerly, Rackiene was a debate coach in association with the World Schools Debating Championship in 2012 and has coordinated debate projects in Lithuania, Finland, Thailand and China. ⁴