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Fellows in Action

Regional Forum

Bochum 2007: A Network of Friendship

Pawel Laidler

Among the many conferences and forums in which I have participated during the last 10 years of my academic activity, the 2007 SYLFF Africa/Europe Regional Forum proved to be one of the best. It was held at Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB), Germany, in June of 2007, the 20th anniversary year of SYLFF, gathering more than 40 young scholars and researchers, all active SYLFF fellows in their respective SYLFF institutions. What was it that made the forum so unique and challenging? Was it the perfect joint-organization of the Tokyo Foundation and Institute of Development Research and Development Policy at RUB? Was it the comfortable hotel and delicious food during the forum? Was it the unforgettable concert by the SYLFF musicians or the sightseeing tour of the coal mines? Or perhaps it could have been the quality of the oral and poster presentations by the forum’s participants? In my view, all of the above contributed to the forum’s brilliant success, for which I wish to express words of gratitude to the Tokyo Foundation and RUB, both of which were represented by people both professional and kind, though this event’s success lies equally in the perfect suitability of the event’s participants.

About a year ago, local universities and SYLFF-endowed institutions nominated their representatives for the forum; most of them were PhD students. At that time, however, no-one was able to foresee how enriching and challenging the meeting would be. Each representative prepared either an oral or poster presentation concerning the forum’s theme of ‘Human Rights and Creative Leadership,’ addressing contemporary problems such as poverty, hunger, inequality, and various forms of discrimination that have led to violations of fundamental human rights and liberties—problems with which the participants’ respective European and African societies have been struggling for years. The presentations raised a considerable number of questions and led in turn to wide discussions concerning the future of human rights in those regions. In this regard, among the many interesting presentations, I should mention in particular a valuable and heart-touching speech given by Mr. Goran Svilanovic, the former minister of foreign affairs of Serbia and Montenegro and the 2004 SYLFF Prize winner, who opened the discussion on the issue of creative leadership.

The various 15-minute oral presentations and 2-minute poster presentations (followed by a one-hour poster commentary) produced additional challenging discussions demonstrating that young scholars and researchers from Africa and Europe were not only able to identify important problems of the contemporary world, but also to share their ideas about how to resolve social issues in different regions of the globe. It is worth noting that a poster session was held for the first time during a SYLFF regional forum, and despite the short time available for oral comments, that session proved to be a valuable way of presenting the issues in question. Both the oral and poster sessions demonstrated how much effort and dedication the forum participants devoted to preparing their interesting and challenging projects, which examined such diverse issues as migration, rights of children, sex-oriented discrimination, the status of minorities, and sources of economic aid. Also important, most of the presentations not only defined the problematic issues but also tried to answer the question of the role of leaders in resolving them.

Apart from those sessions, members of the SYLFF Fellows Council (SFC), represented by Rozenda Hendrickse, Sherilyn Tan Siy, and Stepan Holub, gave a presentation regarding the SYLFF NAPSA (Networking and Programs for Social Action) tool kit that had been prepared by the SFC and approved by the Tokyo Foundation’s Scholarship Division. The aim of the tool kit—sustaining networking and collaboration among SYLFF Fellows—became visible during training workshops led by the above-mentioned SFC members. Thus the forum’s participants were able to understand the basic theoretical goals and objectives of the project, and they could also improve their skills in networking, sharing information, and applying their teamwork and leadership abilities. Various training activities, including “word association” exercises and “forming local organizations,” served not only intellectual purposes but, above all, enabled the participants to get to know each other better. And this was to be the forum’s greatest achievement: the creation of a network of friendship.

Fulfilling SYLFF purposes, the forum participants created “one big family of brothers and sisters,” on the one hand discussing serious problems of the contemporary world and, on the other, sharing their cultural differences and similarities. As a result, the fellows were active both during the daily sessions at the RUB and during the spontaneously organized meetings in the evenings, when they disappeared into the so-called Bochum Bermuda Triangle. There they undertook such challenging activities as group singing of national anthems and lullabies, or learning foreign languages, especially in the context of making toasts. Thus, toasting words like prost, karibuni, salute, and nazdrowie became part of the unofficial SYLFF language spoken by most of the forum’s participants, now close friends. And even the election of new members of the SYLFF Fellows Council did not produce any conflicts within the new family, because it was more important for everyone to share values raised by the late Ryoichi Sasakawa than to engage in any kind of activity that could make future cooperation difficult. We can therefore rest assured that the new SFC members chosen from the Africa/Europe region (Dinu, Nicholas, and Pawel) will be as active and as effective as their predecessors who proudly represented the whole SYLFF family.

Summing up, during the 2007 SYLFF Africa/Europe Regional Forum there was laughter, there were smiles, there was brainstorming, there was constructive discussion, and in the end there was the unique atmosphere of an event that everyone seemed to have enjoyed. I do not know if any of the forum’s participants will become a world leader, confronting the most important global problems of societies. Nonetheless, I am definitely sure that participation in the forum allowed me to meet people capable of such a high level of achievement. SYLFF fellows are becoming important members of their local communities, having the necessary vision and imagination that can contribute to the solution of the most pressing social problems. All of the 2007 SYLFF Africa/Europe Regional Forum participants are much more than individual leaders; they are true friends. And there is nothing more powerful than a network of friends whose passions and determination can change the world into a better place. It is just a matter of time when the real effects of the forum’s discussions will be visible, thus enabling the SYLFF motto to be realized more fully.

There is one other thing I would like to add. On the next-to-last page of the publication commemorating the first 20 years of the SYLFF Program one can see faces of numerous SYLFF Fellows from all over the world. They might differ in nationality, ethnicity, language, and culture, yet these people share the single idea of making the world better. This picture symbolizes the realization of the purpose for which SYLFF was created. The same kind of picture exists in my mind, reflecting the great diversity of the Bochum Forum participants. The future is already better. Thank you, SYLFF Fellows.

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