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THE SUNDAY GLEANER, NOVEMBER 13, 2016 | ARTS & EDUCATION

cure’, an adage that theShichigo Elementary School
recognises and follows, theinstitution has got the parents
and community involved in theexercise to maximise the benefits of the programme. Fromassisting in teaching students
about safety practices, to cleaning the school compound, dutyis pride, not a chore.
In a grade four class, students filled out
worksheets on theimportance of protecting themselvesat all times andbeing aware of
their surroundings,and each had theirrecommendations.
“These exercises,”
Nakatsuji said, “arean integral part ofthe school’s curriculum, and especially after thePOSTCA R D F R O M J A PAN

Hope for aSAFER
tomorrow

TOKYO, Sendai City, Japan:
LONG THE banks ofArakawa River inTokyo, a group of people are huddled together as theylisten to Minoru Igarashi’s
instructions on colour coding
for garbage separation and safety.
The group, employees of a
local company, gathered toclean up the banks of the river,assisted by Arakawa Clean-AidForum, a Tokyo-based non-government organisation.
“We are working for a common cause: to clean the riverbank,” said Natsuyuki Fujimori,a 20-year-old, who is one of thefive full-time employees of theNGO.
Fujimori, who chose environmental protection over a corporate job, said that their teamorganised 159 cleaning exercisesin 2015 and collected 5,602
bags of garbage – includingfrom PET bottles, shoes, cans,baseball and tennis balls, tyres,and insulin syringes.
It is a collective and community exercise. The NGO, to fundits operations, organises cleaning exercises for companies thathave environment protection as
their corporate social responsibility mandate.
Groups spend a couple ofhours on a weekend afternoon
collecting garbage, filling out aquestionnaire, and getting edu-A

Amitabh
SharmaCONTRIBUTOR

cated on the impact of various
kinds of garbage on the environment and the food chain.
“Today’s lesson,” Fujimorisaid, “is on plastic micro pellets
and the food cycle. The fish eat
these pellets and these are thesame fish we end up eating,with toxins in their system.”
The group, after the conclusion of the cleaning exercise,
got together and pumped theirfists in unison for a job welldone. It was a community andcollective effort.
Around 300 kilometres, northof Tokyo, at the Shichigo
Elementary School in SendaiCity, 33 grade two students
jumped and crouched under
their desks in unison as theirteacher, Atsuko Kamata, gave acommand. This is part of theirdisaster-preparedness lesson,and today, they were learning
about what to do in the event ofan earthquake.
“Disaster preparedness is partof our curriculum and we haveallocated 30 hours in the yearfor grade one and two and 35
hours in the year for grade threeand above,” shared MasakiNakatsuji, vice-principal of theSegregated and packed ... notice the caricature on the bag... that’s the mascot of the local government for garbage
bags

PHOTOS BY AMITABH SHARMA

Today’s lesson is ... Natsuyuki Fujimori gives a presentation on effects of garbage on the river’s ecosystem.

Grade 4 students of Shichigo Elementary School, Sendai,attend a disaster preparedness classschool. The school is developing a national curriculum on
disaster preparedness based on
its first-hand experiences withthe deadly earthquake andtsunami that left more than
20,000 people dead in Sendai
and surrounding regions.

NOT A CHORE
The grade two students weredivided in groups as they studied a poster with a photo of theirroute, on which they had to give
their input on how they would
react and save themselves if anearthquake struck. “I will run toa safe location and hide there,”
said one student. Her classmate
added, “I will run away fromthe danger.”‘Prevention is better thanMarch 2011 Tsunami, we aregiving more emphasis to disaster preparedness and management.”
The tsunami, which unleashednature’s fury on the human existence, was an act of God; but
the laughter of the children at
the elementary school andyoungsters like Fujimori are areassurance that God gives us
hope, and the next generation isready take care of their planet,
for we have not inherited thisEarth from our ancestors, but
merely borrowed it from ourchildren.
[ The visit to Japan is part of‘Pacific Islands and Caribbean
Journalists’ Programme’ organised by the Tokyo-based
Association for Promotion ofInternational Cooperation(APIC), with support from theForeign Press Centre, Japan.]amitabh.sharma@hotmail.com