Doors to Diplomacy Student Contest Awards Ceremony

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, thank you very much, Richard. And it's a great pleasure to welcome you all here to the State Department. And this award ceremony is important to me because it combines two of my favorite things: young people and computer technology, and especially the use of the internet; in fact, these days it's hard to separate the two.

And so, I am pleased to be able to join our co-sponsor, Global SchoolNet, in honoring the winners of our 2004 Doors to Diplomacy contest, along with the coaches, the adults who have mentored you through this process and who guided these wonderful young people to victory.

The Doors to Diplomacy contest is one of the creative ways we are working to interest young people in international issues. As Global SchoolNet, a leader in international online education can attest, the internet can be a powerful learning tool, a tool that can help students become informed and responsible global citizens.

The high school teams who created this year's winning websites are from: Atizapan de Zaragoza, Mexico, and Oswego, New York; 183 teams from 27 countries competed for these awards. So these two winners should feel very proud, indeed, to have been selected.

I've seen your websites. This morning when I was getting ready to give these remarks, I said to my staff, "You put in my remarks that I have seen their websites, but you haven't given me the URL for the websites. So I can't say something, if I haven't done it." So, immediately, on my computer comes the websites, and I have been to both of your websites this morning.

And I have examined them, and I am very, very impressed by what you both have done. I plan to go back to those websites later today and examine them more closely to see if you are really deserving of the awards that we are about to give you. (Laughter.) But I am quite sure that you are.

And though your two websites are quite different, they have a lot in common. Both are excellent ways for young people to learn about important issues like terrorism and trade, and both websites show a depth of understanding, quite sophisticated depth of understanding of these very complex issues.

I'm pretty sure that if Abraham Lincoln really had to fight the war on terror, like he does on the New York team's website, he'd be contemplating some of the solutions offered on the Mexican team's website. Without a doubt, were he in office today, President Lincoln would be relying heavily on technology to help track down and shut terrorists operations, just as we and other governments across the globe are trying to do today.

When I became Secretary of State, a little over three years ago, I said that I wanted to get the internet on every desktop of every employee who works for the State Department. Here, in Washington, and at every one of our embassies around the world, it is a goal that I have accomplished, we have accomplished, a great team here at the State Department has accomplished. And over the last three years, we have put 44,250 internet-capable, broadband accessed computers on all of our desks throughout the State Department.

I hope you learned a lot in creating the material that all of these computers will use. And I'm sure that your impressive web work will increase the understanding of other students around the world. Once I put all of these computers down, I had to make sure that everybody was really using them. I had to make sure that we had a great website of our own so that people will be attracted to it, and so it would be used more broadly.

And I'm so proud of our website. I'm proud of the youth programs that are on our website and the means by which you can get information about the world, immediately, instantaneously, at your fingertips. And I want our website to be the best with respect to international relations. Don't go to Google, go to state.gov -- (laughter) -- if you really want to know something about any country in the world.

I hope that each of you, as you continue in your educational career, and as you start to think about what you will do in life, will not only continue with your interests in the internet and in the use of computers and the power of computers for good, I hope that, as a result of your experience with designing these websites, you will consider, perhaps, serving in international relations, in some capacity, in diplomatic service of Mexico or of the United States or in some other way.

And so, it's a great pleasure for me to have you here in our Treaty Room, the room where we sign important treaties, and where we have important occasions, important occasions, such as this. I congratulate each and every one of you. Keep up the great work.

You might catch up to my 9-year-old grandson, who is a computer expert. He has been a computer expert since he was about 2-years-old, just as you all were, when you suddenly understand the power of this thing sitting in front of you with a screen and you start to push keys, and suddenly the whole world is at your disposal, the whole world, all of the information in the world is now available to you in the most powerful way possible, through the power of the internet and the power of computer technology, and it is a power that is available for my grandson, for you and for your parents, and for all of us to use in helping to make this a better world by sharing the best knowledge in the world so that this knowledge can reach the farthest corners of the world and have a transforming power to it that changes life for the better.

And you are in the forefront of that. And what you have done with your websites certainly demonstrate that you understand what I am talking about, you understand the power of this technology. And so, congratulations, once again, and I would first ask the Mexican team to join me at the podium for me to make the presentation.

(Mexican team joins Secretary Powell.)

SECRETARY POWELL: You've got to turn around. (Laughter.) He wants to be on my right side. (Laughter.)

(Secretary Powell presents Mexican team with award.)

(Applause.)

SECRETARY POWELL: And now the team from my home state, New York.

(New York team joins Secretary Powell.)

SECRETARY POWELL: You can use a computer, but not a digital camera. (Laughter.)

(Secretary Powell presents New York team with award.)

(Applause.)

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you all so much. And now I will turn the proceedings over to Ambassador Boucher.

Richard.

Thank you. Thank you.

(Applause.)