OUR THOUGHTS No.10

皆さま、こんにちは！🌠

第66回国際学生会議（ISC66）のページをご覧くださり、ありがとうございます！！

 

ISC66の実行委員の思いを届ける"OUR THOUGHTS"企画！！を行っていきます！

 

第10回目はISC66の実行委員長を務める、河畑波恵です！！

 

Hello to everyone! My name is Namie Kawabata Wilson and I am the president of ISC66.

To me, ISC is a place where each person can be themselves: they can share their culture, their personalities, and their quirks without judgment. Nationalities do not matter- we are all “global citizens.” 

 

I grew up in an environment in the United States where I had friends from many cultures and different religions. My close friends’ parents were from China, India, and Israel, just to name a few. I loved being in this environment, as I learned so much about the world from my friends: their different foods in their lunch boxes and their experiences when they visited their grandparents that live in other countries. I was in middle school when I first realized Japanese curry and Indian curry were much much different (hahaha). When it came time to choose a post-high school track, I knew that I wanted to see more of the world and learn from other people about their cultures and experiences. This is why I decided to study in Japan in an international, English-instruction program.

I enjoy studying in this program, where I study and interact with professors and students from all over the world. My view of the world grew, as I met and talked to more and more people from different areas of the globe: Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore from Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Serbia from Europe. So many people with different backgrounds were all at my school, and I was overjoyed to be able to learn from them. 

 

Last year, as I was looking for something to do during my long summer holiday, I came across ISC, and I knew I had to join. People from around the world would come to Japan, and I wanted to meet them and discuss with them about anything and everything, of course about our table topics, but also about small topics from our everyday lives: I distinctly remember talking about the differences in the number of clocks inside our houses, as well as the situation of freedom of speech in countries around the world. 

 

 

Throughout my many experiences from middle school to my university life, the biggest thing that I have learned is that no matter what experiences we have, no matter what cultures we come from, no matter what nationalities we have: it doesn’t matter. We are all humans, living on this planet. We of course have differences that we can learn about from one another, as I have stated above. But what I have really learned, most of all, is that we are more similar to each other than anything else. We all eat, we laugh, we love. Sometimes, we all experience hardship, and we get over them. Sometimes, we work well together as a team, and sometimes we don’t. But what is beautiful about the people at ISC is that we all continue to try to understand each other and work together, which is something I hope that the world will one day learn to do to solve problems without violence or suffering.

This is why I have decided to join ISC one more year. I want to be able to spread the message to say, “let’s put our differences of nationality away. Let’s work together, get to know each other, and understand that for all of us to survive and thrive, we should cooperate as global citizens.” 

 

In order for our world to work together and protect our lives from various threats, such as climate change and disease, we would appreciate it if you join our cause. Any small support helps.

Thank you, 

 

Namie Kawabata Wilson

ISC66 President