An Analysis of the Impacts of Participatory Process in Collaborative Decision-making of Stream Restoration: Anyang Stream Restoration Case from South Korea
August 10, 2016
August 10, 2016
August 10, 2016
July 29, 2016
The Tokyo Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2016 edition of Voices from the Community is now available as a PDF file and in print format. Featuring a new cover design, the booklet contains 20 articles uploaded on the Sylff website over the past 18 months.
Voices 2016 contains a section of articles related to SLI and SRA. More than three years has passed since the Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) program was relaunched in 2013 to support fellows’ social engagement activities. Two articles in this section were written by fellows directly involved in the SLI projects, and three more are reports by program officers. Issues covered range from the refugee crisis in Europe and school bullying to opportunity gaps in education. The articles in the SRA section showcase the diversity of research undertaken abroad, including environmental policy, history, and economic development.
Other articles from across the Sylff community include one on climate changes in India written by a Sylff steering committee member and another on youth leadership in Thailand. The Tokyo Foundation is delighted to have received many contributions from around the world, and we look forward to receiving many more submissions. There are also two pages of photos featuring the many outstanding fellows whom members of the Tokyo Foundation had the pleasure of meeting in 2015.
The booklet can be downloaded as a PDF file here.
We are always eager to receive your contributions to the Sylff site. Reports of your academic or social action achievements should be submitted to the Tokyo Foundation at leadership [a] tkfd.or.jp (replace [a] with @).
Guidelines for writing a Voices article can be downloaded from here.
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CONTENTS
SYLFF LEADERSHIP INITIATIVES | |
The Refugee Crisis on the Borders of Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic | Věra Honusková and Martin Faix |
[Report] The Refugee Crisis in Europe and the Role of the Czech Republic | Keita Sugai, program officer |
[Report] An Initiative to Nurture Young Musicians in Lithuania | The Tokyo Foundation |
Using Traditional Patriarchal Institutions to Address Women’s Problems | Romina Istratii |
[Report] Identifying Effective Prevention and Intervention Strategies for School Bullying in New Zealand | The Tokyo Foundation |
List of SLI Awardees and Projects in 2015 | |
SYLFF RESEARCH ABROAD | |
Toward an Understanding of the Medieval Mediterranean World | Gregory Williams |
Theories of Modernism in Cinema | Miłosz Stelmach |
Anti-Immigrant Policies in Arizona and Their Impact on Mexican Families | Eduardo Torre-Cantalapiedra |
Internet Policymaking and the Case of Brazil’s Marco Civil | Guy Hoskins |
The Sociolinguistics of Greek Teenage Language Practices on Facebook | Christopher Lees |
The Socioeconomic Dimension of Irrawaddy Dolphin Conservation | Sierra Deutsch |
Oil and the City: Hope, Expectation, and Development in Ghana | ThienVinh Nguyen |
A Remembrance of Books Lost: Bengali Chapbooks at the British Library | Aritra Chakraborti |
List of SRA Awardees and Research Topics in 2015 | |
ACROSS THE COMMUNITY | |
Deliberative Polling® as a Means of Improving Public Knowledge | Otgontuya Dorjkhuu |
Helping to Develop Young Leaders in Community Resource Management | Pradhana Chantaruphan, Olarn Ongla, Saiwimon Worapan, and Alongkorn Jitnuku |
Chinese Investment in Central and Eastern Europe | Ágnes Szunomár |
How Can Mathematics Help Us to Understand Complex Systems? | László Csató |
[Report] Sylff Chamber Music Seminar at the Julliard School (January 4–13, 2015) | Tomoko Yamada, program officer |
Rising India: When and How? | Joyashree Roy |
The Urban Art of Hip Hop among Young Immigrants in Palermo, Italy | Martina Riina |
2015 in PICTURES | |
Leadership in Action: Meetings with Sylff Fellows 2015 |
July 28, 2016
By 19603
Chika Ezeanya, a Sylff fellow from Howard University in the United States, initiated and implemented a two-day “Workshop on Character Building and Preparing Young Rwandans for Leadership towards Societal Advancement” in May 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda, with the support of an SLI grant. The following article is her reflection on the workshop. The successful workshop greatly contributed to nurturing leadership in young Rwandans who will be leaders of the community, the country, and the world in the near future.
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The organizer, Ms. Chika Ezeanya, presents with passion at the workshop on character building and leadership development in Kigali, Rwanda.
On May 25 and 26, 2016, the University of Rwanda College of Business and Economics gathered 30 of its brightest 300-level male and female students (according to GPA) at Nobleza Hotel in Kicukiro for a two-day intensive workshop on leadership and character building for societal advancement. The workshop was supported by a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant.
The motivation behind the workshop is that the burden of national advancement rests on the shoulders of young people below the age of 25, who comprise 67% of Rwanda’s population. The main objective of the leadership training was to introduce young Rwandans with leadership potential to the need for building character toward effective leadership. The overall aim is to prepare these promising young people to become well-developed individuals and citizens and ensure that Rwanda as a nation is able to leverage its human resources to meet its economic growth and social advancement goals at all levels.
Education has been established as a veritable tool for training young people so that they will be equipped to hold leadership positions across sectors as older adults. Not many young Rwandans, however, are able to complete secondary education. According to the World Bank, Rwanda’s secondary school gross enrollment rate stood at 33% in 2013. Even for the few Rwandans who are able to study up to the university level, the curricula are lacking in leadership training modules. Training on leadership therefore needs to be given to selected Western-educated and not-so-educated young people with leadership potential in Rwanda.
The leadership training endeavored to instruct young Rwandans with leadership potential on the concept of effective leadership and its role in ensuring economic growth and social advancement at all administrative levels. It is hoped that beneficiaries will be more capable of effectively discharging their present duties as youth leaders, in addition to being prepared for higher leadership responsibilities as older adults in Rwanda.
Since the genocide, the government of Rwanda has placed emphasis on preventing a reoccurrence and has instituted several strategies for ensuring economic growth and social cohesion. Much has been achieved through numerous successful education policies, poverty alleviation programs, and agricultural and rural development projects. But these strategies lack adequate programs aimed at training the minds of young Rwandans on the need to imbibe certain character and behavioral traits necessary for effective leadership, which can firmly place the country on the path to economic growth and social advancement.
Two international facilitators from the United States and Nigeria were present at the workshop to introduce certain concepts to participants and to assist them in individually and collectively thinking and working through the concepts over the course of two days. One local facilitator was also available.
Topics discussed during the workshop included “Character building as a prerequisite for societal advancement” and “Purpose-driven living, values, and principles: establishing a connection,” presented by Olumide Omojuyigbe from Nigeria, and “From self-leadership to leading others” and “Ethics and leadership,” presented by Edozie Esiobu. Meanwhile, Dr. Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu presented three courses including “Aligning personal goals with community development goals” and “Trust and economic development—a nexus.”
Also present during the workshop were three representatives from Sylff who traveled all the way from Tokyo, Japan, to show support for the workshop. Mari Suzuki, who is Sylff director for leadership development, gave a speech on the vision of Sylff and the importance of workshops of this nature to the organization. Keita Sugai, a Sylff program officer, gave the closing speech and also presented certificates of participation to all participants. Ms. Aya Oyamada, also a program officer, was at hand to ensure the success of the event. The three representatives also met with Professor Nelson Ijumba, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and Research, who was acting on behalf of the Vice Chancellor Professor Phil Cotton, and with the Principal of the College of Business and Economics, Professor Satya Murty. During the meeting, areas for further collaboration between the University of Rwanda and Sylff were explored.
The audience participated actively in the question-and-answer segments as well as in the breakout sessions, where they were divided into groups and given questions to tackle related to the topics of the day. In an anonymous questionnaire at the end of the training sessions, student participants indicated their happiness and satisfaction with the workshop, citing the knowledge they had gained, and expressed their hope of forming an association across the University of Rwanda to promote the truths they had learned from the workshop. Most participants noted that they were being trained on character building for the first time ever and stated that they left the training on the final day with a transformed mindset.
July 20, 2016
Attending the Sylff meeting at Howard University were (front row, left to right) Mari Suzuki, Phiwokuhle Mnyandu, Yohei Sasakawa, Vanessa Oyugi, Markus Weise, (back row, left to right) Alhaji Conteh, Benjamin Aciek Machar, and Pedro L. Cortes-Ruiz.
Howard University is a culturally diverse, research intensive, and historically African-American private university providing educational opportunities of exceptional quality for its students. Located in Washington, DC, the university is committed to producing leaders for the United States and the global community from among its mostly African-American and African-born international students.
On April 11–15, the university hosted Research Week 2016 as part of its efforts to foster the research mission and celebrate its research enterprise. The Sylff Session during the week was held on April 13, the aim of which was to introduce the Sylff program and fellows to the wider university community. Six current Sylff fellows talked about their research activities, the progress they have made thus far, and their experiences as fellows. They also took questions from the floor.
The audience included students, members of the Sylff advisory committee and steering committee, the associate provost for research and graduate studies, and representatives of the Nippon Foundation and Tokyo Foundation. Among those in attendance was Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa, who is also the WHO Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. During his visit to Washington, he also spoke at a conference—co-hosted by the World Bank and the World Health Organization—aimed at moving mental health to the mainstream of the global development agenda.
Prior to the Sylff Session, Mr. Sasakawa met with members of the Sylff steering committee and Sylff fellows to discuss the Sylff mission and underlying values of the program (see photo). He shared his involvement with Africa by introducing the activities of the Sasakawa Africa Association, an international agricultural development NGO seeking to improve the productivity and profitability of smallholder farms in Africa.
July 15, 2016
July 14, 2016
Fellows (from left) Soumya Bhowmick, Sudeshna Dutta, Purbasha Auddy, Mayuri Banerjee, Kheya Samaddar and Reep Pandi Lepcha with the hospital’s staff (in white).
The Jadavpur University Sylff Association (JU-Sylff Association) has been actively engaged in working for the community since it was formed in 2005. On February 23, 2016, six JU Sylff fellows visited the Premananda Memorial Leprosy Hospital in Kolkata, India. The hospital is run by the Leprosy Mission, an international nongovernmental organization that works with individuals and communities affected by Hansen’s disease. The visit to the hospital is made annually by the JU-Sylff Association, inspired by the activities of Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the Nippon Foundation. Kolkata in western India, where Jadavpur University is located, has a long history of the disease, and stigmas still remain.
The fellows visited the hospital in their local community, which now houses 20 patients, and deepened their understanding of this now curable disease. The visit began with a showing of a film titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan about a Pakistani Muslim girl who, unable to either speak or hear, becomes lost in India and meets an Indian Hindu man with whom she develops a warm friendship. The patients, who often feel isolated and excluded from society, were moved by the strong bond spanning differences in language, religion, and country between the girl and the man.
During their visit, the fellows—doctoral candidates Reep Pandi Lepcha, Sudeshna Dutta, and Purbasha Auddy and MA students Soumya Bhowmick, Mayuri Banerjee, and Kheya Samaddar—painted a wall of the hospital ward with trees, birds, flowers, and butterflies in bright colors, helping to lift the mood of the patients and staff members. They also presented board games to be used by the patients, along with handmade cards with the patients’ names on them. These gestures, demonstrating an understanding of the hospital’s work, were deeply appreciated by the staff.
Through this visit, the fellows deepened their insights into the patients’ suffering, loneliness, and isolation due to discrimination and prejudice. They vowed to continue this initiative and have already started planning their next visit. The most recent visit was made possible by financial and moral support from Sylff Program Director and Professor of Economics Joyashree Roy and former Sylff fellows.
July 11, 2016
June 16, 2016
Violinist Erika Mitsui, who received a Sylff fellowship in 2015 while attending the Juilliard School, visited the Tokyo Foundation on June 6. She is not only a very talented musician but also a socially engaged future leader with an open mind and deep insights into global issues.
Mitsui, who earned a master of music in May 2016, is actively involved in organizing social activities through the medium of music. After the powerful Kumamoto earthquakes in April 2016, she took the initiative to raise funds for the restoration of disaster-struck areas. And following the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, she participated in the Tsunami Violin Project to make violins from driftwood found among the tsunami debris. She played a beautiful piece with one such violin in New York in memory of the quake victims.
In the future, Mitsui hopes to organize activities to promote communication between different cultures. She became interested in the subject when she realized during a multinational workshop that music had the power to break down barriers and connect even those people with different mother tongues.
The Tokyo Foundation applauds Erika’s initiatives and achievements so far and wishes her great success in her path as a socially engaged musical artist.
Sylff fellows and steering committee members are always welcome to stop by the Foundations’ office while visiting Tokyo.
June 15, 2016