16 students took part in our English Multicultural Camp in Karuizawa, Oiwake from August 27th until August 29th.
This camp was held all in English and most activities looked at the world and tried to deepen everyone’s understanding of global issues. For this year’s camp, we were very fortunate to have Chat Leaders from Rwanda and England join us! We also had a one-year exchange student from Australia and two former Aoyama Gakuin students participate in this year’s camp. They shared a lot of their views, introduced their cultures, and joined our students in all the activities.
During our camp, we had an activity about our "Plastic World" and some of the environmental problems plastic is causing around the world. Students browsed various videos on environmental issues and took notes. Then they were paired with students who had watched different videos and compared the problems and solutions they had heard. Lastly, they gave group presentations about their findings.
In addition, another activity introduced the concept of fair trade and why there is such an imbalance of wealth between the farmers, production, distribution, and sales agents. We divided the students into teams of farmers, transportation, supermarkets and other retailers, and then had heated group debates/role-plays as to how much of a percentage each group should get. After this, they worked on the problem of why there is such an imbalance of earnings between the coffee farmers to the big coffee companies.
Also during the camp, we had a seminar about our school’s East Timor Study Tour. This tour was very closely related to the above activity because it included a discussion about ways to improve the situation for coffee cultivators in East Timor. The students also learned more about Blue Peco, a students’ study group, which is working hard in East Timor to do research on Fair Trade. During this session, teachers reported the actual situation of coffee cultivation in East Timor, which was carried out by the "East Timor Study Tour" with students from this current school year. This presentation helped further deepen the student’s understanding of the issue.
These three days at camp were not only beneficial for our student’s English but they also learned a lot about their own country and made many discoveries about the world as a whole!
