No.203-5
"Is Short News
Boring?" By
Public Relations Committee
Yukio Okusawa, Chairperson of Public Relations Committee
Happy New Year greetings to all! It is a
great pleasure to deliver this first Short News of the year to everyone.
Despite the year-end rush to wrap-up loose ends and attend to family
commitments, many members have sent us articles and helped in editing and
sending out this first issue of the new year.
We, the members of Public Relations
Committee, produce the English version which has the same content as the
Japanese version. The Japanese articles are translated into English by about 10
members, proofread by native English speakers, printed, and mailed to
friendship members and all the national embassies in the area. My first dream
of the New Year was a realization of my long-time hope of issuing the Short
News in Korean, Chinese, French, Arabian, Spanish and Russian languages. But
sadly, this was just a dream.
As you may already know, we also publish
Short News on our Internet homepage. On our web site, http://www.unesco.or.jp/meguro/ or http://www.meguro-unesco.org/, you can
see all the Short News for the past three years. The advantage of the homepage
is that we can deliver photographs in beautiful colors at a low cost. Also with
the homepage being accessible to anyone, the informational materials about
UNESCO, records of lectures, and informational notices are available to people
interested in our activities. We have received inquiries from non-members who
have sent in applications to become members. There have also been cases where
school students have referred to our homepage for their research, and recently,
a Japanese magazine requested permission to print the Japanese translation of
the "Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity" in their magazine.
This declaration was adopted at UNESCO's General Conference in November of 2001
and is said by some people as the second most important declaration following
the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The Japanese translation
of this declaration by Meguro UNESCO was used at the "3rd World
Water Forum". We must become aware that we will continue to have wars if
we do not recognize the importance of cultural diversity, and the declaration
of "Cultural Diversity" was also translated into Japanese by our
English translation team. You can find both English and Japanese versions of
these declarations on our website.
Meguro UNESCO is proud to be recognized
for its high level of translation skills. Especially the recent translation of
an NHK radio program interview on the subject of the U.S. return to UNESCO
(2-page article in the Short News #201 issue), which was highly praised by the
UNESCO Charge de Mission to the Executive Office of the Director-General, Dr. Eiji
Hattori (advisor to Meguro UNESCO). With the cooperation of many of our
members, we are able to spread the news of our activities to people around the
world.
At the end-of-the-year PR Committee
meeting, we reflected on the work we did in the past year, and the most common
opinion of our members was that "Short News is boring". Members
expressed that all the activities organized by Meguro UNESCO are interesting
and attractive, but when they appear in the newsletter, they sound boring.
Criticisms included the shortage of creative editing and that many articles
lacked consideration to capture the reader's interest. I was, in fact, relieved
to hear these opinions because it was an indication of the passion our members
felt about the Short News. As a result we resolved that each committee member
should take the responsibility in creating an interesting Short News that
everyone will enjoy reading. I apologize for using this space for internal
committee matters, however I promise that our committee will make a big
improvement this year.
Meguro UNESCO will celebrate its 50th
anniversary this fall. It is the hope of all members that the next 50 years
will finally bring peace to the world. We, as the members of the Public
Relations Committee, will give our best efforts to deliver the activities of
Meguro UNESCO to our readers in a much more interesting fashion. Please watch
over us, and if you have interest or have some ideas for improvement, your
participation in our committee will be greatly welcomed.
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