What can we do for world peace?
A Project Ibunka Online Symposium took place on Saturday, June 25.
Organizer:
Masahito Watanabe, Yokohama National University
Participants:
Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine
Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland
University of Pamplona, Colombia
SMA Plus PGRI Cibinong, Indonesia
Universidade Tecnologica Federal do Parana, Brazil
New Taipei San-Chung Commercial and Industrial Vocational High School, Taiwan
University of Oulu, Finland
Seoil University, South Korea
Yokohama National University, Japan
An intercultural exchange project, Ibunka has been organized by Masahito Watanabe from Yokohama National University for more than twenty years. “Ibunka” means “different cultures” in Japanese. This is a web-based bulletin board discussion in English among English learners from various countries.
Since 2000, more than 7,300 students from different countries have participated in the project. Last year, in 2021, from Sep. 27 to Dec. 23, 263 high school and university students from Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Japan, joined the project and exchanged 2,046 written messages on the boards.
One of the goals of Project Ibunka is to enhance English learners’ cross-cultural awareness and promote world peace.
In the last project, Project Ibunka 2021, we saw more than 220 Ukraine students and as many as seven Ukraine teachers. They were quite active and made the most invaluable contribution to the project. How have they been? Are they living in secure surroundings, or are they in the middle of relocations?
Online Symposium Program
