Participating in All Japan High School Forum 2022

Two of our grade 10 students created and submitted their video presentation to All Japan High School Forum 2022. This event is part of the Worldwide Learning Consortium (WWL consortium) led by the Japanese Ministry of Education.

One of our partner schools, Kobe Municipal Fukiai High School, is one of the WWL’s hub schools in Japan. They kindly invited us to participate in this forum.

In the video, the grade 10 students talked about why education on nuclear weapons is essential. After creating the video, they answered our questions and shared their thoughts about the project.

Q. What motivated you to talk about the importance of education on nuclear weapons?

A. We had a unit called “Pikadon” in 9th grade, where we learned about the history of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from multiple perspectives, got facts and information from different sources, and created our own project with our groups in the end. We felt like the education we received and the way we approached it really helped us develop our own understanding and have our own personal intake from the unit. Therefore, when we heard about the opportunity to participate in the high school forum, we thought that the importance of youth education on nuclear weapons would be something important and familiar for us to talk about.

Q. What other actions have you taken, or will you take to raise people's awareness about this topic?

A. We are taking initiatives by working with the Aogiri club that just started at the end of last year. This year we are hoping to expand our projects by creating pamphlets/stickers to advertise the school, creating a video on the Aogiri tree to show younger students, collaborating with clubs in other schools and more to raise awareness and educate our international community. We hope to continuously organize events, and open up this club to the entire CA community. We have also joined the high school peace messenger program outside of school. Every month we organize petitions around the Hyogo prefecture to send to the Model Nation headquarters for nuclear abolishment.

Q. Do you have any other points that you would like to share regarding this presentation/topic?

A. As we are both high schoolers, and this topic might not be the most exciting matter to discuss, it is always a challenge to take the initiative in such an opinionated topic. However, we strongly believe that there is always something we can do to raise awareness. We can definitely initiate conversations within our CA community, even if we don't have the ability to make a substantial change.