Former Waveney students helps with relief effort in Japan

By DONNA-LOUISE BISHOP, Reporter

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

EPD

 

 

 

A FORMER Waveney student has returned from Japan, pledging to continue her support for the relief effort after volunteering in the heart of the disaster area following this year’s earthquake and tsunami.

Jessica Brown, 33, a former student of Halesworth Middle School and Sir John Leman High School in Beccles, joined voluntary organisation Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET) and in 2006 became part of the Alumni Association (JETAA), which aims to further Anglo-Japanese relations in the UK.

Originally from Stoven, Ms Brown, who now lives in Edinburgh and is a volunteer chairman of JETAA Scotland, travelled to country this year.

She said: “I visited the affected area of Tohoku in northern Japan. I travelled there on behalf of the JETAA Scotland Chapter and during the course of my time in Japan I visited old friends and enjoyed the food, friendships and taiko-drumming of my previous time in Japan.

“The latter part of my trip included a conference on UK-Japanese educational and cultural relations, meetings with the senior vice minister for foreign affairs, followed by voluntary work in Rikuzen-takata.

“The trip to Rikuzen-takata was shocking. It is unbelievable the amount of damage that the tsunami inflicted. The city is a bare landscape dotted with derelict buildings which look as though they might collapse any time. However six months on, this city has really pulled through.

“The tsunami left destruction and debris for many kilometres inland and the people of the city have tidied massive areas with the help of volunteers, but still there is nothing left; no night-life, shops or businesses. Daily life will take years to recover.”

Ms Brown, who is planning a return trip next year, also visited the mayor of Rikuzen-takata to ask what would help the community.

She said: “He asked for contact from the outside world, including messages for the children of the city. He fears that the children will not recover from the experience of running from the tsunami and from the loss of their friends and family members.”

Ms Brown is trying to get together donations of chocolate advent calendars to send to the children in the tsunami affected areas.

She added: “There are 27 children there who were orphaned by the tsunami, so at least 27 calendars for them will be a good target and a small token to show that we are thinking about them and we support them from as far away as East Anglia.”

• To send a postcard, letter or an advent calendar please forward to “The children of Rikuzen-takata”, Rikuzen-takata City Office, Jinaishi 42-5, Takata machi, Rikuzen-takata City, Iwate Prefecture 029-2292. Japan.

• For more information please visit the facebook page online at www.facebook.com/pages/Chocolate-Advent-Calendars-for-the-children-of-Rikuzen-takada/252794524768167

JET Calls in Favors in Tohoku

The Wall Street Journal
SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
By Cheng Herng Shinn

 

Since 1987, the Japan Exchange and Teaching program has been paying keen young foreigners to experience life across Japan in return for spending some time teaching each week.

For many former JET participants, it’s the experience of a lifetime, and the start of a lifelong bond with the country.

Associated Press

A fishing boat washed ashore by the March 11 tsunami sits at Shiogama port, Miyagi prefecture, where former English teachers recently revisited as part of a government program.

Now JET is looking for something in return:  It’s inviting selected alumni to visit schools where they once taught in areas struck by the March 11 disasters to get the word out via blogs and social media that reconstruction is afoot and Tohoku is open for business.

Tanya Gardecky, a 24-year-old from Canada, was one of 20 chosen for the project put together by the Japan Tourism Agency and JET. The JET program has come under the microscope of late having been deemed unnecessary by a government unit looking into wasteful spending in May 2010. The program survived the witch hunt, but its budget was cut by more than 15%.

Other JET alumni who returned to Japan before Ms. Gardecky have already started posting photos on the Internet via Facebook. Her weeklong trip took her to schools in the coastal city of Shiogama and the Urato islands, both in Miyagi prefecture, where she taught until last August.

“I expected much more damage but it wasn’t as bad as I thought,” Ms. Gardecky said of her impressions of Shiogama on arrival. Though affected by the tsunami, the city of about 60,000 people wasn’t as severely damaged as many others.

According to the ministry of environment, 94% of the debris in Miyagi prefecture has been cleared. But signs of damage are still evident: Women crouched wiping mud off pens one at a time in a closed stall provided Ms. Gardecky with a stark reminder of the devastation wrought by the disasters.

Ms. Gardecky went on to visit her former students in a school in the Urato islands. What would usually take 40 minutes by ferry took an hour because of debris floating in the water. The principal had warned her about the damage the island suffered, but when she arrived, Ms. Gardecky was still taken aback.

“I finally saw the damage I was told about. I was honestly shocked and upset,” Ms. Gardeckywrote in her blog. “Walking around the island I saw massive piles of scrap metal and wood, which used to be houses.”

The island was without water for two months, and electricity wasn’t restored until July. But for all the hardship her former students had to endure, she said they were bursting with energy when they saw Ms. Gardecky.

“The people are doing well and, for the most part, do not want to complain about the losses they have suffered,” she wrote in an email. “Japan still seems very safe to me.”