Message to the Delegates to the Third Inter-American Meeting of Ministers of Education.

ON BEHALF of the Government and the people of the United States, and on my own personal behalf, I have great pleasure in sending greetings and good wishes to the delegates to the Third Inter-American Meeting of Ministers of Education, assembled at Bogota.

Your meeting represents yet another step along the road of Inter-American development that began with the Act of Bogota in 1960, and received further impetus at Punta del Este in 1961 and Santiago in 1962. In meetings such as these positive measures can be taken to advance the great goals of our common commitment in the Alliance for Progress. Education and the development of human resources are of the utmost importance in attaining these goals, for they lie at the base of economic and social development and, accordingly, at the base of the Alliance itself.

Today, more than ever before, education is a prerequisite for progress and it is the passkey to the future. We therefore applaud and encourage the increasing emphasis on education to which you are committed and your efforts to translate into concrete form the goal of wider educational opportunities for all.

With you I share the determination that before this decade comes to a close, the Americas will have entered upon a new era, where the progress of the Alianza will truly reflect the great spiritual and cultural heritage of this Hemisphere.

In your deliberations and high endeavors, I wish you every success.

JOHN F. KENNEDY