Dear friends and colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

for the 10th time we arrive at the end of this beautiful experience of the World Environmental Education Congress.

I hope that you will go back home, to your job places, to your Universities and schools where you teach, you do research or you study, with rejuvenated enthusiasm, with a wealth of contacts, with a treasure of experience and relations that you consolidated or that were born here in Bangkok.

From my side and on behalf of my staff, I express my gratitude and I renew my thanks to all Thai public and private institutions and to the people of Thailand for their graceful kindness and warmth.

During this 10th congress, many networks and initiatives met and/or created new relationships, many important meetings have taken place and important decisions have been made.

I thank also all youth who has joined us at the congress and the Young Reporters for the Environment.

As I said at the opening ceremony, I would like to remind you that the WEEC does not represent only congresses but it is an active network and it aims to be the more and more active between one congress and the other, with some common tools, initiatives, goals and work plans that I would like to stress here:

1. The website and the social network (as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the newsletter) that the Permanent Secretariat manages and develops, are strategic tools to use and enhance with everybody participation. So, visit and use the website and the social networks.

2. Between one congress and the other I hope in the increase of regional and sub-regional meetings, over the two years that separates one WEEC to the other.

3. I wish that the network can be more and more a promoter and supporter of joint programme of research, campaigns, exchange among countries, of training as summer and winter courses, didactic tools, online courses, etc. I invite you all to make proposals and to ask to the Secretariat the WEEC logo for initiatives and activities that you will organize.

4. Last but not the least, today the preparation of the World Environmental Education Day 2020 starts. Since now, I invite you to develop initiatives in the month of October 2020 and devote to the WEEC the initiatives that you possibly have already planned for that month.

5. Finally, I open the call for bid for the congress. Since now it is possible to contact the Secretariat for information and advice about the candidacies for hosting the 12th WEEC in 2023 in a date that will very significative because it will be a “WEEC+20”, twenty years after the firs congress in Portugal;

and I am proud to announce the location of the 11th WEEC we have chosen among 52 professions of interest and among five short listed countries.

The 11th WEEC will be held in Prague. It is for me an immense pleasure to confirm our next appointment in 2021.

The title is just a promise: “Building Bridges”!

Now, our colleague professor Ian Cincera of Masaryk University is going to present you and explain the spirit and the setting of the next congress we will work on together.

My warmest wishes and my warmest greetings to all of you.

See you in Prague!