Report

Report2009

Pre-training(For ASEAN participants. Thailand-July 2009)

Three day pre-training was conducted from July 29 to 31 at DENSO INTERNATIONAL ASIA, CO., LTD in Thailand, welcoming 20 participants from 6 ASEAN countries, which aimed to introduce each other including both participants and staff members and help participants to learn the purpose & goal of the program as well as the general guidelines for the program.

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The first day started with ice-breaking games and self introduction,followed by explanation of the program.

Next day, each country team made a presentation on their "country report" which explained about the environmental situation for each country. The length for each presentation was 15 minutes. By choosing the order by lot, Team Malaysia delivered the fisrt presentation, followed by Team Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The issues raised by teams varied from nature conservation related matters such as illegal deforestation and endangered wild spiecies to socio-environmental topics as waste management and 3R. It was found that in a country like Singapore the environmental issues are widely recognized socially and politically with the environmental initiatives led by the government, yet in some countries there are not enough government-led initiatives to protect the environment.

On the final day, participants shared in turn, using the small posters, their own problems or difficulties they face when they proceeded with the environmental activities. Then they discussed how they can solve these issues. Some mentioned about time constraints as they are students. Many pointed out that it was difficult to raise fund for the activities, continue the activities, raise peoples' awareness around them and find members for the activities.

After that, they wrote down what they would like to learn from the on-site training and shared them among the participants. The most common answer was how they were doing to raise awareness in Japan. They mentioned they were interested in the environmental initiatives or environmental education in Japan as well as civil environmental activities. The second common answer was how to balance the economical development and environmental conservation. They left the training venue in the evening, July 31 and went back home.