Bringing up children in a divided world, riddled with prejudice and ignorance, is no easy task. In order to motivate them to be changemakers, it’s essential for them to interact with people from other cultures and experience the barriers melting away. And so it is important to have programmes that allow children to understand, accept each other and forge close bonds.
The 30th Asian-Pacific Children’s Convention (APCC) that was recently held in Fukuoka, Japan, aimed to do just that. The event, which saw the participation of 234 children from 35 countries, fostered friendship and bonding among the next generation. Eleven-year-olds were invited to be junior ambassadors of their respective countries, to take their first step towards becoming global citizens.
After multiple rounds of interview, one of the six participants selected by Junior Chamber International India was Prathamesh Darak from Hyderabad. The other members belonged to different states of the country.
Prathamesh Darak
Once they reached Japan, all the participants were asked to live together and the Indian team was allotted a room with the Mongolian team. Prathamesh shares, “I had the best time. The students from Pakistan and I became the best of friends. We all enjoyed our evening by spending time with each other, clicking photos and playing a lot of different games.” He adds, “I didn’t know other countries had such interesting games. It was also my first time eating with chopsticks and I loved it.” The Indian team performed a folk dance that put forward the country’s culture. After the dance programme, all the participants had to stay with a Japanese family for three days.
Prathamesh had a wonderful experience throughout. “They loved me a lot; my host mom, dad and brothers took good care of me. They also didn’t eat non-vegetarian food as long as I was staying with them. They gave me presents and loved the presents I gave them too. I enjoyed going to their school, shopping and attended other classes like swimming and calligraphy,” says Prathamesh, who only missed out on one thing — Indian food!
HT04
