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" Miswritten Postcards Arrive"　
　On the afternoon Friday, February 14th, people in Fudo Elementary School, Ms. Ugamura, and four 5th and 6th grades students came to the administration office with miswritten postcards.
Mr. Nishimura, Ms Tachikawa, Mr. Sherlock, and Ms. Masuda listened to the story of UNESCO from Mrs. Kato, the president of Meguro UNESCO Association and watched the videotape of "Living together in Bangladesh".
They learned how those postcards are useful, about the lives of people who cannot attend to the school and the pleasure of having hope and dreams in each person after learning of letters from those who benefited from Terakoya Project.
　During the presentation ceremony, they said, "We made an appeal and gathered postcards over three days", and handed three envelopes filled with miswritten postcards to Mrs. Kato.　Ms Ugamura said, "You may travel abroad to many countries in the future.　It would be good to visit developing countries and other cultures as well as visiting America or England.
　While seeing goods from foreign countries, they found a snakeskin from Mr Basheer, the ambassador of the Sudan.　All watched carefully as it was unrolled and were surprised how long it was.
　It was short but enjoyable time getting to know the heart of UNESCO through the Terakoya Movement.
We appreciated the support of UNESCO World Terakoya Movement of Fudo Elementary School students from the bottom of our heart.
Good luck for the children's future.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Shizue Suzuki, Secretariat　


　　　　　

Report on World Education Forum and World Social Forum
　
Yoshihiro NAKANO　　　(PhD Student, CDE centre, University of Sussex,　Youth Member)
　
　19th to 28th January------World Education Forum (WEF) and World Social Forum (WSF) took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Those Forums aim at posing the question on the neoliberal globalisation conducted by the International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF as well as the multinational corporations from the US, Japan, and other advanced industrial countries since late 1970s. The mass of people, from different places of the world, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, gathered at the Participatory Democratic city, Porto Alegre; demonstrate against such form of globalization; and collaborate one another to make alternative vision of the world. The slogan of the Forums is: 'Another World is Possible (Outro Mundo　 Possivel).
WEF focused on the issues on the privatization of education system under the impact of economic liberalization. It argued that the privatization would undermine the foundation of social stability through generation, by reducing the opportunities for primary and social educations. Then, WSF mobilized more than 100,000 participants, two times more than the previous year: and performed resistance against neo-liberalism and the growing potentials of the US military action over Iraq.
Personally, the participation to the Forums cultivated the further understanding of globalization with a critical perspective. Globalization only benefits a few social groups in the developed societies while it plunges mass of people into the crisis of their life. Furthermore, globalization is a political matter and many people now engage themselves to change this trend at the grassroots level. Reflecting those aspects of reality, I have decided to commit myself to such social and ethical issues as I do my research on international development further.
　
PS: One difficult thing was that Latin American people do not speak English and French well. Hence I had to communicate with people and participants in Portuguese and Spanish although I haven't practiced them. I talked with participants, asking dictionaries and managed to come to know their understanding and feeling on globalization. 'Cultural understanding begins with learning language': I realized this with a profound experience.

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