Report on the 5th Day: Information Volunteers at WCDRR
“Information Volunteers @ Sendai” within the Kahoku Shinpo Newspaper Agency Online Community is a blog reporting on current events going on in Sendai. A wide variety of DRR-themed conferences, forums and events are held during the period of WCDRR. People from all around the world and country are seen on the streets on Sendai, as the world is connected as one through the theme of DRR.
In the blog, there will be detailed information on what kind of events and their contents are going on at the Sendai City Civil Activity Support Center, as part of the thematic pavilion “Civil Society Collaboration and DRR”.
We will also be showcasing voices of the participants of events taking place in the various public forum venues open to public in Sendai city. There will also be a column named “From WCDRR with Love” showing people holding sketchbooks with their personal messages.
This blog not only reports on the events happening in Sendai but more importantly the level of excitement and hype buzzing in the city. There are approximately 30 writers, mostly students, writing on this blog.
The student members of the blog consist of past interns of Kahoku Shinpo Newspaper Agency’s Journalist Internship. It is mainly made up of students who worked in the disaster stricken areas disseminating information after the disaster. The interns learnt interview and article writing skills from reporters from Kahoku Shinpo Newspaper Agency.
The students are not only from universities in Miyagi prefecture but also from Kanto and Kansai regions in japan. Many of them are aspiring newspaper journalists and magazine writers.
Takumi Wakai, 3rd Year Student at Meiji University, who worked as information volunteer, was one of those aspiring to become a newspaper journalist. He hopes to accumulate experience and learn journalism skills from this event.
In the article “Disaster Recovery by 3 Survivor Storytellers at the Global Conference on DRR for Civil Society” written by Wakai, the importance of survivor storytelling, as well as the motivation of the storytellers, is emphasized, in order to pass the message on to the readers.
▲The information volunteers also work as cameramen, snapping pictures that capture the scenes from a different perspective.
▲Wakai with a friendly and amicable smile, who writes in style and eloquence.
The WCDRR was reported in various forms of mass media. The blog reports the conference in a vastly different perspective with its group of young talented writers.
Reporter:
Citizen Writer Wakako Yamada
