United Nations World Conference on DRR has come to an end on 18th March. The thematic pavilion events held at the Civil Activity Support Center as part of the public forum concluded on the 17th, as the final packing and cleaning up process ensued. Several students, however, remained in the room, busy writing article scripts. They are the “information dissemination volunteers”. They are made up of approximately 30 university students from around Japan, mainly from Miyagi, Yamagata and Tokyo, who had taken part in the Journalist Internship organized by Kahoku Shinpo Newspaper Agency.
They participated in various public forum events during the conference and reported on the situation of the events through blog articles. They were also involved in other projects such as the gathering of messages from people with regards to DRR, as well as introducing the backstage members and volunteers. They were basically student reporters of the unseen and unreported sides of the WCDRR.
The main leaders of this project are Tetsuya Yajima and Daisuke Oizumi, two journalist of the Digital Editorial Department of Kahoku Shinpo Newspaper Agency. They were in charge of editing articles written by the student reporters.
Student Report Takumi Wakai having his article checked by Leader Yajima.
The completed articles are uploaded onto the “Information Volunteers @ Sendai” Blog. This project started about one month before the conference. They visited the various organizations preparing for the public forums and reported on their progresses and situations through interviews. Shoko Baba, 3rd Year student at Tohoku University, who has done three pre-event interviews, told us that her job was to let the readers feel excited about the upcoming events.
This is where her writing skills are put to the test. It is not merely introductions of the events, but she has to write such that readers would want to participate. She currently has 69 articles published on the blog.
Part of the published articles were exhibited in the thematic pavilion during the conference.
The student reporters encouraged each other after the interviews and writing of articles. You could feel the sense of achievements and camaraderie looking at them and their happy faces. One of our student reporters, Katsuharu Yumoto, 3rd Year student at Meiji University, told us that he was greatly inspired spending time with his friends during this event. This whole event was enriching for the student reporters, learning about DRR and meeting new people
From students to working adults.
Through this conference, the students gained precious learning experiences, which would hopefully aid them in taking up the responsibility as DRR leaders of the next generation.
Volunteer staff at the Support Center. Look at their bright smiles brimming with a sense of achievement.
Reporters:
Kazuma Kon, 3rd year at Tohoku Gakuin University
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We are grateful to be able to participate in this event as information dissemination volunteers. We would like to express our gratitude to all those who supported us, especially Yajima and Oizumi. We were afraid we might be of great use at first, but we soon realized that we were not alone; we were in this together. Even as we were busy writing articles, we never stopped encouraging each other, showing acts of kindness such as buying snacks for each other and so on. I am really grateful to ths student reporters. Thank you for all the wonderful articles and this incredible experience.
