Voices 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 Want to Hear Your “Voice”

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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Voices from the Sylff Community
July 2016

CONTENTS

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.

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.

Communicating with patients.

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.