UNESCO/ACCU events

Sincere cross-cultural dialog promotes mutual understanding and appreciation.

Transcript

Every year the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) in Nara, Japan, conducts the ACCU International Exchange Programme for a small group of young people from UNESCO member countries. Participants from about ten Asia/Pacific countries are mostly experts in fields related to the preservation of cultural heritage. They get two weeks of intensive training and cross-cultural exchange experiences.

On Friday, the 14th of November, 2008, our university worked with ACCU to give ten UNESCO participants a full day of discussion and sight-seeing with students in Kyoto [1]. In the morning I moderated a 90-minute discussion. One of my colleagues first spoke about Learning in an Ancient City, and then nine of our students spoke about their personal encounters with traditional Japanese culture [2]. UNESCO participants asked questions and shared their ideas following each presentation.

This was our third time to collaborate with ACCU, and, like the previous times, I think it was really successful [3]. The UNESCO participants and our students spent a whole day talking with enthusiasm as they shared experiences and ideas.

Cross-cultural dialog seems most meaningful to young people when they focus on personal experience. Our students didn't present a standard introduction to Kyoto for tourists. Instead, they spoke from the heart about their experiences and their ideas and feelings about their cultural identities in the context of Japan's rich cultural heritage. They freely admitted their lack of knowledge and spoke of their narrow interests in particular aspects of culture.

Their frank self-disclosure impressed the UNESCO participants. Everyone spoke freely, and sometimes critically. Participants noted that Japanese people lack geographical knowledge of the Asia/Pacific region, and we all shared ideas on the development of cultural identity, the preservation of cultural heritage, the transfer of cultural knowledge, and the appreciation of cultural diversity through the study of geography, literature, and traditional arts and crafts.

When young people get together in sincere dialog on serious topics, good things happen.

Notes

This year participants came from India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
Eight of the students were Japanese and one was from China. With UNESCO participants from ten countries, young people represented a total of 12 countries.
We hosted ACCU participants in 2005 and 2007. Each year participants write program evaluations, which are compiled into a final report. Comments on the program in 2007 encouraged us to host a similar program in 2008.