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The Heart of Europe Debating Tournament (HOE DT) is an annual debating tournament for high school-level teams which is held in English. ==History== The Heart of Europe Debating Tournament is a WSDC (World Schools Debating Championships) based tournament founded by John L. Wickham and the students of Olomouc - Hejcin High School. Originally a competition for high school students of European countries that had previously participated in the KPDP (Karl Popper Debate Program) established by OSI (Open Society Institute), after some time it became a truly global competition for high school debaters. The first Heart of Europe Debating Tournament was held in Olomouc, Czech Republic in 2001. The event attracted participants from Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In 2002, the tournament didn't take place because the organizers were not able to obtain the necessary funding. Nonetheless, a year later, in 2003, the second year of the tournament was held. It has been hosted in Olomouc, Czech Republic every time since then, being organised by Debate Club Olomouc throughout the years 2004–2009. Heart of Europe has lately become an annual event and has been organised by the Association of Debate Clubs of Olomouc Region since 2010. The year 2010 was a real step-up for the tournament, having had 17 countries participate, including such exotic ones as South Africa and China that engaged in the Grand Final of this year. In year 2011 there was really significant step in improvement of quality of the tournament. Organising Committee established cooperation withPalacky University Olomouc. All the dabetes took place in magnificent building of Faculty of Science. The tournament also received new visual style in this year and a lot of work on promotion was done, such as new social networks, photo and video documentation. New participating countries were Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Singapore and Sweden. Year 2012 was the greatest cornerstone in the history of the tournament. It was held by a new organization, Czech Debate Society, o. s.. For the first time, the tournament was also available online to participants all around the world because of the project "Heart of Europe accessible to everyone". What more, one additional new project was connected with the promotion of the tournament, The Czech Debate TV, with purpose to monitor debate and educational events and present educational videos. The tournament enjoyed fruitful partnerships with projects Debating Europe and The Office of the Government of the Czech Republic - European Affairs Information Department. In that year we have yet again welcomed several new nations, namely Chile, Nigeria, Macedonia, as well as it was the 5th anniversary of Jakub Kadlec' involvement with the tournament. 2013 was the 10th anniversary of Heart of Europe and the tournament got its mascot Herr Heart. The biggest innovation of Heart of Europe 2013 was a test run of the British Parliamentary track before the high school competition, which proved to be a success and will be repeated in the future. As for the staff, the Chief Adjudicator panel was changed – extended to include judges from all over the planet in order to increase its diversity. There were also new participating countries (such as Croatia or Ukraine) and new partneships made, mainly the one with Debate Club Pandora in Kiev, which later resulted in CDS helping with organization at their tournament called Under Chestnut Trees. Other new partners and sponsors included ARGO, ČEZ or Deleo. In terms of cultural program, Heart of Europe newly included a talent show, where everyone was invited to showcase any skill other than debating. Several debaters and judges performed singing, playing an instrument, dancing as well as some acting and stand up comedy. The next addition was a thematic tour of the city, which was special that year because of historical costumes and props used to demonstrate the legends of Olomouc. Additionally, registration to the tournament was tied to a blood donorship initiative. Year 2014 was most notable by the outstanding quality of the teams, even by the already quite high standard of the tournament - perhaps a result of multiple delegations spending several years prior to 2014 honing their skills at our tournament every year. The teams were also extraordinarily balanced. In the first break round, the last team to make the break from the 16th place defeated the first team, two members of which were still the best two speakers of the whole tournament. Even more interestingly, the team with the best two speakers was from South Africa, just like the team that ultimately won the whole tournament, only from an entirely different institution, thus also continuing the regular cycle of different continent winning each year. This was also the first year after the definitive retirement of the founder of the tournament, John L. Wickham, from the position of Chief Judge, making it a bit of an experiment in new organizational procedures. The new paradigm for the future of the tournament was decided to be a rotating position of a chief judge, open to new ascending debate stars, as well as experienced debate masters. New participating countries were Bermuda,〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20140726/NEWS/140729780&source=RSS )〕 China and Denmark. Czech Debate Society, o. s. has changed name to Czech Debate Society, z. s. in accordance with new civil code. Year 2015 continued in the tradition of four continents being represented (Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa), and had one of the most interesting International Friendship Nights ever, including cardboard Michelle Obama, Bulgarian traditional dresses and dances, and the release of Chinese lanterns into the skies. The winning team was yet again from a different continent than during the previous year, this time from Canada, and they faced strong competition especially from teams from Denmark and Thailand. Interesting first time occurence was the inclusion of a homeschooling debate team from Springfield, USA, as opposed to the usual case in which all debaters are students of educational institutions. Since this team ended up breaking, it has definitely proven that participation of homeschooling students can indeed be educational and inspirational. New participating countries were Morocco, Poland, Thailand and Vietnam. Heart of Europe DT has become very popular during past years. There have been participants from countries such as Belarus, Bermuda, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, Palestine, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and United States of America. All debates in the tournament are in English. This is for practical reasons, but it means that many countries debate in what is for them a foreign language. This has not stopped a number of these teams being very successful. Special awards have been introduced for the highest-ranked teams made-up of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) and English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Heart of Europe Debating Tournament」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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