(In photo: American students are checking on the solar power lanterns, which the 3rd Toshiba Youth Conference brings for the young campers to learn about the GAIA Initiative providing solar lanterns to rural Indian villages.)

The camp, organised by non-profit organisation BeGood Cafe, started off at Josai Awa Kamokawa Learning Centre in Chiba prefecture. Kids got to know each other and overcome cultural and language barriers through communication, team-building and goal-sharing workshops.
These bright young minds explored, jotted down notes, and took photos of what they saw at a range of sites: from the simple and ecological community at “Kamokawa Nature Kingdom” amid Chiba’s rich green mountains to the concrete jungle of metropolitan Tokyo. In the capital they visited the “Tokyo Uden 2017” bio-diesel scheme and a rooftop honey project in Ginza. They also visited Josai International University founder Mizuta Mikio’s Japanese farmhouse, built 150 years ago, and the Toshiba Museum to see what modern technologies might be significant in the future.
Working in three groups – Lifestyle, Business/Politics, and Science/Technology, they produced articles about their fieldtrips for the camp journal at the end of each day.
On the fifth day, students interviewed Japanese congressman Mitsuji Ishida, who advocates renewable technologies and sustainable communities, plus Institute for Sustainable Energies Policy researcher Shota Furuya, and the president of an environmental advocacy company called Sustena, Miyako Maekita. They then wrote articles about each person in the evening.
The idea of writing a journal came from feedback from previous years. The aim was to give students a sense of accomplishing a mission and results they could share with others back at home, according to BeGood Cafe chairman Kiyoshi Shikita.
Tanachit Sangchan, from Assumption College in Lampang, said the journal made the camp positively different. It helped him to learn how to work with international friends and prepared him for a university workload. But he wished there was more time to write articles, as many kids worked late and woke up next day feeling sleepy.
Despite the tight schedule and pressing deadlines, the students managed to complete their tasks nicely, thanks to evenings of “sharing and reflection”, in which they reviewed daily lessons and made suggestions for fellow campers’ articles.
Thawatchai Sangdee, from Triam Udom Suksa School, said the “sharing and reflection” was a big help in exchanging details with others who may have seen different things during fieldtrips. He also wished that Thailand had similar intense-but-fun camps on environmental or developmental topics for youths.
The conference concluded with presentations by pupils from the eight schools that attended about practical measures and things to do later.
Shota Utsumi and Maya Hirohara, from Keio Shonan Fujisawa Senior High School, vowed to promote the concept of local production for local consumption to cut down CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, Hitashi First High School’s Yusuke Horie and Mariko Kikuchi said they would start with small steps like using ecofriendly products and organising use of oil candle-making during the school festival. Waseda University Senior High School’s Shinya Hara, Ritaro Kasai and Takumi Nagashima said they considered recycling used oil from their school cafeteria.
School for Environmental Studies’ Diana Eng, Ashley Hernandez, Nina Luksanapol and Alejandro eyed spreading the word about sustainable lifestyles with friends and families. They also thought of organising a weekend environmental conference for New York high school pupils, and doing small but key things such as keeping a rooftop garden, buying produce from local farmers’ markets, and reducing use of plastic bags.
Students Arkadiusz Kacala and Jakub Ubysz said the camp made them realise that Poland’s simple countryside lifestyle could be good for a sustainable future and they could still prevent environmental problems back home. The Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology’s Anastazja Karolewska and Aleksander Martyniak said they would explain what they learnt to peers and urge them to engage in ecological movements.
Triam Udom Suksa School’s Supawich Wongkietkachorn and Thawatchai Sangdee said they would start a “no-plastic bag” campaign at school and promote the exchange of local products in their communities.
And Assumption College Lampang’s Teerapat Sutjaluk and Tanachit Sangchan said they would collect old cooking oil from the school canteen and do a science project on Vegetable Diesel Fuel (VDF), which reduces CO2 by 2.62 kg per litre.
After this year, all schools – mostly selected because of their consistent engagement in environmental activities – would change, except Polish schools that joined this conference for the second year, as each school has to participate for three consecutive years, Toshiba International Foundation president Fumihiko Namekawa said. While students take turns each year to attend, teachers will remain the same in order to ensure consistency and teachers’ deeper understanding, he said.
Teachers at the conference had a chance to enhance abilities to promote environmental and scientific education, plus intercultural communication and networking through workshops held by the Japan Centre for International Exchange.
Next year, the conference will be held in Japan and Toshiba Thai Foundation is looking to send members of Thai non-government groups to learn how to organise such events to pave the way for Thailand to host the camp some time in the future, or have the ability to organise a similar event on a national scale, Toshiba Thai Foundation chief Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul said.