On April 4th, 2021
Beautiful cherry blossom was in Hiroshima Peace Park. We held the second Development Meeting with overseas at Rest House in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We have asked four students from Tibilisi, Georgia and Nairobi, Kenya. Purpose for this meeting was to ask opinions from various countries regarding to design of HIP HOPE website. It is especially important to see if our contents and designs do not include anything which may offend those with different religions and cultures.
This was the second time for us to meet with Georgian youths, and the first time ever to meet anyone from Africa. It was online, and we had spent some time to get to know each other by asking them about their days in schools, and their countries. There were definitely different from what we knew in our lives in Japan, and as we heard them speak, there were voices of surprises.
After having friendly ice-break, Design team presented designs of characters, and asked their opinions. We checked that if there were any problems. Then we proceeded to inquire what is their symbol of Peace, and what SNS do you use the most, such as Instagram or Facebook. What surprised me the most was that in order to communicate Bird of Peace, countries use “Pigeon” or “Dove” and if using one word, they may not understand. These things happen as we all have our own first language, and English is the second language. This was great lesson for me.
Every time we have such meeting with overseas students, we find something new. I think this is the interesting point. I look forward to having these meetings with them again!
