Thoughts after the 12th International Friendship Youth Retreat of Meguro
UNESCO
By Shigeo Tajima, Advisor to Meguro UNESCO
1. On Preparations
I hear that eleven staff members got together every week to plan and prepare
for this Retreat. I imagine it was no easy matter to make
preparations for several months, and I think it deserves praise. I, together
with the other participants, would like to thank them for it and appreciate
their effort.
As one of the results of their effort, we had fifty-six young participants
including several youths from the Kansai district as well as foreign students
from Shinshu University. It was a particularly noteworthy phenomenon that
our e-mail advertisement began to work.
What came out as a result of their preparations was a “pocket guidebook”
for the participants and a “list of participants”. The former has fifteen
contents: the schedule, matters that require attention in the camping village,
menus, “What is UNESCO?”, the meaning of each national flag( with blanks
for fifteen countries), poverty and food problem as one of the international
problems we now face, discrimination, common sense, the pride of one’s
country, happiness, a constellation map, lists of participants in each
group, a world map, a want ad for the next year’s staff members. And
each had its English translation attached.
In this guidebook we saw quite new subjects that had not been in the
past guides, and also the traces of their hard work and painstaking effort
in giving an explanation of the problems of the world. However, the subject
“common sense” did not turn out convincing enough to make us see why
it was taken up. The English explanations attached to the guide were fairly
good except one particular page, which was hard to understand.
It seems that in the future we will need to include the summary of the
lectures (with its English translation attached) in the guide, or print
it separately to give to the participants. That will resolve at least
half of the communication problems we usually have during lectures. It
was a good idea to prepare a constellation map, but the map was rather
indistinct and there were no English explanations, which will need future
improvement. I think that the world map printed on the last page would
have been more useful if the location of the country of each participant
had been indicated on it.
2. On Implementation
The sports event and the campfire were very impressive and I really had
a good time. All the participants seemed to be enjoying themselves.
The problem of the languages used in the Retreat - It is difficult to
deal with both participants who understand Japanese and those who don’t,
when we, first of all, explain to them how to carry out the Retreat and
also during lectures. If Japanese is to be used, English interpretation
will be necessary, and if only English is to be used, Japanese interpretation
will have to be provided. In any case, we need various ideas to carry
out this kind of international gathering. There will be complaints from
either side if both sides are not treated as equally as what has been done
in printed matter both in Japanese and in English. We will have to take
care of it in making preparations for our future Retreats.
I would prefer that Japanese students took more active part in discussion,
speaking more frequently. That was the feeling I also had when they reported
their results.
In connection with the conclusion of Prof. Hattori’s lecture, one participant
suggested that we should cultivate an opportunity to study environmental
problems. It seems to be the suggestion that Meguro UNESCO should take
into consideration. What do you think of it?
In general, things didn’t really go on schedule. There were unavoidable
circumstances in some cases, but there were other cases of ten to twenty
minutes’ delay with no good reason. We should realize that such lack
of punctuality would make us feel ashamed on the international stage in
the 21st century.
3. On Others
I’d like to thank the staff for their hard work and expect them to make
further effort and develop their possibilities.
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