I am delighted to be here with you today after ten years of being a member of your organization. I would like to thank the organization and the entire team for their diligent work and continuous efforts over the past months to achieve this significant event. We have learned a great deal from being among you, from various cultures and countries that are always striving for development.

Dear colleagues in education and upbringing,

Today, my topic differs from the usual subjects: teaching the abacus. What I want to present today goes beyond that because abacus science has become accessible to everyone, known and spread in almost all countries without exception. Everyone has heard of it; some have tried it and liked it, which is a small minority. Some tried it and hated it, which is a larger majority, and some were not convinced by it at all, which is another matter.

As you know, my name is Dr. Hadi Hamza. My specialty is education from the United Kingdom. I taught regular mathematics for seven years in one of the largest schools in Lebanon, in the capital, Beirut. I started my company in 2003 in the field of educational and administrative training and development. In 2007, I began learning the abacus with the UCMAS company (Kuwait branch) for eight months only, then cooperated with the Indian company GELS for four years, and then with the Japanese company OKABI from 2011 until today. I have joined many organizations, such as your esteemed organization, the PAMA organization in Taiwan, China, and the Japanese ISDF organization. Of course, we achieved many accomplishments, including being the world champion in mental arithmetic with the PAMA organization for several years, setting two world records, and entering the Guinness Book of Records. The first was in 2017 for the largest competition in the world in one hall, with 2511 students. The second was in 2019, when we conducted a competition in the air at an altitude of 40,000 feet for 147 students. These achievements would not have been possible without the insistence and passion for development and the race against time for my love of education, especially mental arithmetic and the abacus. Today, we are present in six countries: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon.

Esteemed members of the WAAMA organization,

While my topic today is the management and organization of abacus sciences, so they do not become what happened to me and others, friends of mine, through the claims of some that they own the abacus worldwide and have the exclusive right to it and its sciences. This is the biggest educational theft from the successes of others, through three types of traders in abacus sciences, as follows:

1. **The first type**: Those who claim that they invented and founded the abacus, and without them, these sciences would not exist. He is a trader and a fraud, no matter how high his status. Through authority, money, and power, he can control others' decisions and convince them that he is the inventor of abacus sciences, demanding a Nobel Prize for this invention. In my opinion, he should receive a Hollywood award for acting and fraud with distinction. Of course, you may be surprised by my words, but this is a fact existing in the Middle East and our world.

2. **The second type**: Companies that deal with these sciences as pure trade, disregarding all educational standards in the abacus system, only caring about financial profit. Anyone with some information about the abacus can open an abacus shop or a small company to teach the abacus and teach what they learned in the way they want. This wrong teaching method later causes significant harm to students because they end up hating what they learned from this fake company that does not respect itself.

**.3The third type**: Some organizations that claim to be international organizations and include many of the companies mentioned in the second type. These are purely profit organizations, and most are private companies aiming to gather as many participants from different countries worldwide to participate in their (international) competitions. Imagine, for example, that in my country, there are six companies teaching mental arithmetic. Each company participates in a different international competition, and each time the Lebanese media says that the mental arithmetic champions have returned from the international competition X, and so on for the other competitions. The community falls into a state of confusion about this topic. In some countries, there are thousands of companies that can participate in hundreds of so-called international organizations, confusing the official organization from the unofficial one. In the end, the participating students in these international competitions win, and the media and community get confused again. This situation exists in almost all countries.

The time has come for the WAAMA international organization, the largest global organization, to put an end to this farce and protect abacus sciences appropriately. We have dozens of other ideas to develop these thoughts, of course, in cooperation with governments, international bodies, and international organizations worldwide. To put an end to these trivial and misleading ideas that cover the whole truth, it is time for the WAAMA organization to take the initiative to organize all these international activities, so the international community knows that there is one large, important international organization that everyone should join, whether it is a company from a country or an international organization. There is one international legitimacy for a large organization, and everyone should be under its umbrella, your esteemed organization. International openness from your side has become imperative and a pressing need. It must become fast so you can take control from the start; otherwise, things will get more and more out of hand, as is the case now in many countries.

Based on what has been presented, I propose the following:

1. Divide the world into nine regions: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, China, Japan, and the Near East, and appoint an ambassador from your organization for these regions to be the legitimate representative of this organization.

2. Visit governments and ministries of education in these countries to license this organization in these countries to become the sole authorized body to spread abacus culture and strengthen the role with the Ministry of Education in each country through China's ambassadors in these countries. This would later result in an international abacus Olympiad under the auspices of WAAMA and the organization's ambassadors in coordination with Chinese embassies.

3. Hold a meeting every four months to discuss the international organization's resolutions, impose its control over abacus sciences worldwide, and enforce a change system on all companies.

4. Organize national competitions within each country in direct coordination with the nine WAAMA ambassadors to produce national champions from each country, who will then be selected for the official global competition (the abacus Olympiad, which takes place every two years).

These are some of the main ideas I propose to start working on. We should not just watch the dream stealers of students through traders who treat the abacus as a commercial tool rather than an educational one. I believe that through our collective efforts and cooperation, we can change the concept of the abacus in all countries within the next five years. Consequently, all dream stealers and traders will retreat before the power of change. We want to be the best for our students worldwide.

(This is speech by Mr. Hadi Hamza at the Academic Exchange Meeting for Abacus and Mental Arithmetic Teachers of WAAMA on July 16th, 2024 in Changchun, Jilin, China.)