No.203-6

Happy New Year from the Secretariat

Fumiko Harada, Secretary General

Meguro UNESCO celebrates its second New Year's since moving to the current office space in the Gohongi Elementary School premises.  Having an office as a base of our activities proved to be far more effective than we had initially imagined, and we are grateful to the school for providing us with the space, especially with the 50th anniversary of our organization approaching this fall.  In addition to each of the committees utilizing the space for its activities, the office functioned as a welcome lounge to a group of several members of UNESCO associations in North Europe, young guests from Afghanistan, and students on school excursion from Iwate Prefecture.  For Meguro UNESCO members, it served as a place to make new acquaintances.

   In addition to welcoming domestic and foreign visitors, we hope to extend our welcome to the elementary and middle school students in Meguro-ku this year.  In terms of office work, we intend to complete the manuals for each project and organize those valuable materials collected over the 50 years since the establishment of our organization.

   With the Meguro UNESCO's 50th anniversary coming up in the fall, it seems like we will be making a big jump forward.  We have an intuition that everything we have done in the past will serve as a fertilizer and suddenly everything will flourish.  We believe that each one of us can overcome what seems like a difficult task by doing what we can do, and the accumulation of steady efforts will bring about peace in the world.

What we do at the Secretariat

■         Dispatch Short News and serve as a communication center:  The language classes take the initiative in 　dispatching the Short News once a month (basically every 2nd Wed.)

■         Hold a weekly secretariat meeting:  Every Wed. from 1-3 p.m.

■         Prepare and hold monthly board meetings:  Once a month

■         Hold committee meetings:  (at times committee meetings are held jointly with the secretariat meetings)

■        Yearly work:  Managing membership list, accounting, PR, preparation for the annual general meetings, etc.

■         Daily work:  Dealing with phone calls and mails, and respond to inquiries and attend to visitors Mon.-Fri. 1-4 p.m.

We welcome anyone to visit the secretariat during the weekdays between the hours of 1-4 p.m.  Please feel free to drop by.  We have videos and CDs of various activities and you can freely attend our weekly secretariat meetings. We are hoping that this year will bring, atthe least, one more interested volunteer to support the developments of UNESCO   activities. We look forward to your interest and participation.
Secretariat:  5725-6150

Left photo: Meeting room
Right photo: Office space - 2 computers, photo copier, printing machine, etc.

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