No.208-３

Dr. Shigeo TAJIMA receives ‘Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals’. Congratulations!

Dr. Shigeo TAJIMA, an adviser to the Meguro UNESCO Association, was awarded a testimonial as a distinguished leader from his alma mater, the University of Minnesota. He earned an M.S. in agricultural education there in 1955. Later, he returned to Japan to gain his Ph.D. in agriculture from Hokkaido University, and then assumed the professorship at Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine. He became director of the Division of Agricultural Education and Science at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 1968. He also contributed himself to the UNESCO activities in many ways in Japan, including being a member of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, a member of the board of governors of the National Federation of UNESCO Associations in Japan, and vice president of the Meguro UNESCO Association.

The award was given for his long-term contributions as an educator and his excellent leadership roles both nationally and internationally. He has worked for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, in Japan. He has also worked for UNESCO, OECD and APO. He is eighty-two years old this year, and is still working hard as the professor emeritus of Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, a member of the board of governors and councils at two agricultural colleges, and the honorary president of the Asia Pacific Association of Educators in Agriculture and Environment.

The detailed information of the award is on the website of the Minnesota University. The picture above is from the page:http://www.international.umn.edu/awards/leader/2004/tajima.html
The University of Minnesota has a very useful article entitled ‘Human Rights Documents and Materials’
(including a Japanese language version) on its website. Visiting the page is highly recommended:http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/index.html

Shirakawa Junior High School Students Visit Our Secretariat

On 26^th May, a hot day, seven students of Shirakawa Junior High School (founded by Shirakawa village, Gifu prefecture) with their teacher, Mr. Junya Ogawa, visited the secretariat of Meguro UNESCO Association. This visit was a part of their school trip program. Their hometown is a very quiet place surrounded by mountains of about 2000 meters high, so they seemed to be surprised at the crowdedness and hot weather in Tokyo.

Shirakawa village is famous for its style of housing with thatched rafter roofs, and is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. So our conversation started about the process of designating UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the current situation of these sites and some problems concerning them. We talked about sites designated as World Cultural Heritage, World Natural Heritage, World Cultural And Natural Heritage, and World Heritage In Danger. We shared the view that we should maintain respect for a variety of heritage sites and the culture contained in these sites.

A student raised a good question to the staff of the secretariat: ‘Many say that Japanese children are in happy environments, but we hardly realize it. Please tell us the situations faced by children of other countries’. So the staff explained the World Terakoya Movement run by UNESCO. Mrs. Hashimoto, vice president of Meguro UNESCO Association, talked about a Terakoya project she visited in Vietnam last year. She mentioned that there were many races isolated from one another by steep mountains and that each race had its own language. She continued that people there need to learn a common language to deepen mutual understanding between races but this raises the fear that they might lose their individual culture. We shared our views well on this topic.

Shirakawa Junior High School is a small school of only 50 pupils. Second-year students have a school study tour in Australia. This tour is very beneficial for the students to put the knowledge obtained through their experiences abroad to the activities in their own community. For example, the list of activities for the 2003 school year shows that the students took part in some community-based activities, including roof thatching and whole-village beautification. They enjoyed involving themselves in these activities as community members. This reminds us of the words ‘THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY’. They told us that their dialect ‘Hansukutai’ means ‘irairasuru=irritating’. We were very impressed by their attitude, learning English while valuing the dialect of their hometown. We would like to have days without saying ‘Hansukutai’. We appreciate the fruitful time we share with these students. - Fumiko Miyazaki, Youth Activity Committee