The Port Center Network, developed by AIVP, the Worldwide Network of Port Citiesis has now its own website online: http://www.portcenternetwork.org.

The Port Center Network concept (as extracted by the AIVP site)

Cities and ports express a growing need to communicate about their specificities. We can observe the rise of a large number of initiatives to educate local communities about the importance and the added value of port activities. Existing educational centers of the modern port activity totally match this strategy. They do inform a wide public about port development stakes for the community, help to increase local support and get younger people be interested in port orientated careers.

Pursuing this objective of awareness and enhancement of port activities, PORT CENTERS provide the public, initiated or not, with the possibility to discover, experience and understand better contemporary port activities. A space open to the widest public, it can cover subjects such as industrial port activities, the goods transported, international trade, the port professions or again the integration of the port with its city and many others.

Two elements are essential and common to the various PORT CENTERS: an exhibition and educative activities. By presenting the diversity of the activities, their economic spin-offs for the territory and the potentialities in terms of employment for younger people, PORT CENTERS have the vocation of explaining, educating and bringing together the port community and the citizens.

The PORT CENTER is not only a "visitors" center with an exhibition. One of the main objectives of a PORT CENTER consist in organizing port excursions/visits, port lectures and other port educational projects with a broad network in the port community (private and public stakeholders), schools and universities.

The project is supported by the European Sea Port Organisation (ESPO)