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Pia is displaying the almost priceless dress...When we started the conference at 10.20 on Saturday morning I don’t think it was many people that thought we would have time to…
…Finish every countries presentation
…Discuss and come up with some sort of action plan what AA:s should do in future
…Have six different fundraising activities
…Have international food event
…Have evaluation
…Have closing ceremony

Eight highlights of this day:

1. Around ten in the morning we were off to the NYC where the conference should take place. Vasilis made introduction with two short movies. The first showing the beautiful scenery of Greece and also footage from the last visit Nippon Maru made in Greece. People took photos. The other movie was photos from the fire catastrophe that recently took both human lives and destroyed forests. With this opening Vasilis wanted to connect things to a global context and reminding of why we are having this reunion.

At 08.30 in the morning it was orientation at the hotel Fenix. At 08.43 almost half of the participants were gathered. No Japanese time discipline here…

Everybody was dressed in their special T-shirt and hat for the day. We got our official nametags and behind them was telephone numbers to key-persons in the organizing committee: Vasilis, Xenia, Stella and Konstantinos. We were informed that the plan for the morning was to split into three groups to hand out leaflets. And we also got the headline for the leaflet: Your breath is in danger – protect the forests!

For the first time a global SWYAA assembly is organized. The country is Greece, the city is Athens and the time is now. All in all 39 participants from 16 different countries are here to foster the SWY-spirit. But hey, when I say: SWY-spirit – you say: Uhhh… When I say: But you know, Ship for World Youth- you say: What ship?

Okidoki, since this is the first more of a warming up report from this historical event I will give some background first.

Hiroyuki Hasegawa: Hiro på besök i San Salvador 2006-06-16Idag kom min vän Hiroyuki Hasegawa på besök. Hiro bor sedan några år tillbaka i Mexiko. Han flyttade dit för att jobba på Japan Foundations mexikoavdelning. I slutet av förra året sa han dock upp sig för att börja plugga på universitetet istället.

Han var, liksom jag, en av deltagarna i Ship for World Youth 10 år 1998. Det är ett utbytesprogram som den japanska regeringen står värd för. Kort förklarat är det en tre månader lång lyxkryssning med 300 ungdomar från tretton olika länder ombord. Året jag var med startade vi i Tokyo och gjorde sedan landhugg för att träffa ambassadörer och presidenter i Singapore, Seychellerna, Kenya, Jordanien och Oman. Det var en helgrym tripp och mer information om utbytesprogrammet - som fortfarande kastar loss en gång per år men det är ganska långt mellan varven då Sverige blir inbjudna, av skäl jag naturligtvis inte har en aning om - finns här: