Presentation at 5th US-Japan Youth Forum

Last November, I had the opportunity to participate in the 5th Annual US-Japan Youth Forum, an event that gives future leaders of Japan and the US an opportunity to share their opinions and ideas. The topic of this forum was "Youth Challenges to Social Innovation: Dynamics of Leadership in the Changing Society." The event is sponsored by the America-Japan Society, Japan-America Student Conference Japan, and Fulbright Japan. I was invited to participate by a fellow Amherst alumni who was an alumni of the student conference that was one of the sponsors of the event. Below are pictures from the event:





For this event, I talked about my experience as a peace studies student, an intern at Peace Boat and its Global Article 9 Campaign, and a researcher of peace constitutions. I also shared my thoughts on why peace constitutions are important for their potential to promote and maintain peaceful relations, non-military aggression, and sustainable development. In addition, I shared my hopes for a future community of people and nations that are tied together by their states' peace constitutions and their desire for realizing a true global culture of peace. You can see my Powerpoint presentation from that day here. In addition, my presentation was videotaped, so you can see the whole thing below:





It was a great opportunity to share with students, young adults, and others my ideas for realizing peace today. That presentation was the first time that I was able to collect the ideas of my thesis research and share them with a larger audience, at least outside the readers of my blog and academic advisers. Of course, I hope to be sharing these ideas much more in the future—both in my future career and in my daily life!


JRG