No_31-1

No.31 Summer 2011
ISSN 1599-4880
Living Together Helping Each Other
Biophilia
The Love of Nature
Perpetuating Indigenous
Wisdom in a Culture of
Peace in Southeast Asia
An interview with
Professor Anwar Fazal
Forest
Humanity
Spirit

I
mminent action to save what is left of the
world’s forests has become critical and
evermore vital to our living. It is reported
that each year, as a result of industrialization,
deforestation continues at an alarming rate;
approximately 13 million hectares are cut down
each year.
As a result of rapid deforestation, its negative
effects such as major increase in pollution and
global warming can now be felt deep in our skins.
Forests act as natural filters of carbon dioxide
in the air and controllers of our climate. It is
apparent that the relationship between forests
and climate are intrinsically linked to one another.
Regardless of South or North, rural or urban,
increasing parts of the world are experiencing
severe climate abnormalities with record setting
heat waves and snowfalls. It is my belief that we
have only ourselves to blame.
Forests not only act as environmental catalysts
but are also home to many indigenous people
where valuable knowledge is passed on till this
day. Deforestation is impacting the lives of these
indigenous people who reside in the forests. More
and more indigenous tribes are left homeless due
to the effects of industrialization and are forced to
live elsewhere and live as a vagabond in rural and
urban areas.
The United Nations has designated the
year 2011 as the International Year of Forests.
Numerous governments, international
organizations, NGOs and individuals have
dedicated their efforts into rebuilding a greener
and more sustainable world in its own ways.
APCEIU is no exception to these efforts and
believes that EIU has to play a key role in
contributing to the efforts of educating our
stakeholders about the importance of forests in
our lives. APCEIU shares the vision and goals of
preserving the environment and ensuring that
future generations will continue to benefit from
the earth’s resources, not be deprived of their
birthright and inheritance.
So how can EIU contribute to the cause of
forest preservation. It is through EIU that we can
portray the issues of deforestation in a holistic
manner. The issue of deforestation needs to
be dealt holistically so that we can realize the
effects from various points of views. For example,
deforestation damages our environment,
diminishes our cultural diversity, violates the
rights of the indigenous people, etc. In this issue
we wish to present to the readers the various
aspects at which forests can be viewed in order to
raise the awareness of the importance of forests
and the gift it presents not only to us but more
importantly to our children.
Today we are no longer bound to the borders
within our own country. Globalization is fast
approaching and we can no longer be dependent
solely on and be responsible only for the
resources within our own borders. It is my hope
that through this issue, we are able to reach out to
forests through an EIU perspective.
LEE Seunghwan
Director
Director’s Message
Cover photo: An image of an abandoned flat
© Rahman Roslan(Clockwise)
C O N T E N T S
3 Director’s Message
4 Special Column
Perpetuating Indigenous Wisdom in a Culture of Peace in Southeast Asia
8 Focus: Lost Forest, Lost Humanity, Lost Spirit
8 Forests for People, People for Forests: Lessons from Asia
12 Biophilia – the Love of Nature
16 Forests ‘ ’ Us
20 Eco-diversity and Life Style in Indian Tradition
24 Best Practices
24 Revitalizing Folktales and Storytelling Traditions
27 Educational Renovation - Toward Sustainable Development in Vietnam
30 EIU Happy School
Youth Theatre for "Peace"
32 Interview
NURTURING THE FUTURE – THE POWER OF PEOPLE
An interview with Professor Anwar Fazal
36 EIU That I Am Thinking Of
Between Dili and Seoul
40 Letter
Spreading Its Mission to Share Its Vision
41 Special Report
Transcending Barriers, Forging Friendships
44 Peace in My Memory
A Quiet Lament for Sacrifice
47 Comic Relief
The Giving Farmer
48
Money Talks: Learning Cultures through Currency
51 APCEIU in Action
ISSN 1599-4880
Registration No: 구로바-00017
Living Together Helping Each Other
SangSaeng (상생) is published
three times a year by the Asia-Pacific
Centre of Education for International
Understanding (APCEIU) under the
auspices of UNESCO.
26-1, Guro-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul,
Republic of Korea, 152-050
Tel: (+82-2) 774-3956
Fax: (+82-2) 774-3958
E-mail: sangsaeng@unescoapceiu.org
Website: www.unescoapceiu.org
Publisher: LEE Seunghwan
Editor-in-Chief: Kim Kwang-Hyun
Editorial Staff: Park Hyun-Jin
Copy Editor: Yoav Cerallbo
Designed by: Seoul Selection
Printed by: PITEC
SangSaeng (상생), a Korean word
with Chinese roots, is composed of
two characters: Sang (相), meaning
“mutual” (each other) and Saeng (生),
meaning “life.” Put together, they mean
“living together,” “helping each other,”
which is our vision for the Asia-Pacific
region. SangSaeng (相生) aims to be
a forum for constructive discussion of
issues, methods and experiences in
the area of Education for International
Understanding.
Signed articles express the opinions of the
authors and do not necessarily represent the
opinions of APCEIU.
©APCEIU
Director LEE with participants
of the The 2nd Meeting of UNESCO
Education Sector Category II Centres

4 SangSaeng 2011 Summer 2011 Summer SangSaeng 5
C
ulturally diverse and historically rich, Southeast
Asia is a valuable hub of local culture and
indigenous wisdom and knowledge. Located
geographically south of the China Sea, the region consists
of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR,
Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand,
Timor Leste, and Vietnam.
In the face of a rapid modernization process that continues
to shape the world, Southeast Asia remains home to a
wealth of important indigenous traditions and knowledge.
The region’s 11 nations share some common traditional
wisdom and craft which originated from their ancestors in
Southeast Asia thousands of years ago such as the building
of stilt houses for dwelling, as well as the use of rice paddies
for agriculture. Southeast Asia also prides itself on unique
and distinct forms and genres of arts and literature. Ancient
wisdom is likewise manifested in such great architecture as
the Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Banaue Rice Terraces in
the mountains of Luzon in the Philippines, and the grand
antique Buddhist stupas in Thailand and Myanmar.
From tacit to explicit wisdom and
knowledge
According to the Center for International Earth Science
Information Network, “indigenous knowledge” is
local knowledge unique to a given culture or society.
It is the systematic body of knowledge acquired by
local people through the accumulation of experiences,
informal experiments, and intimate understanding of the
environment in a given culture.
In Southeast Asia and many parts of the world, indigenous
wisdom and knowledge play a significant role in building
and developing societies. Regrettably, many great lessons
of the ancient past and indigenous wisdom are not
pace of modernization, indigenous communities face many
challenges in keeping their traditions, customs, and even
languages alive.
The rise of postmodernism in the early 1900s which is
often associated with divergence, plurality, and skepticism
caused fragmentation among peoples. As a result, this
phenomenon has affected the flourishing of local wisdom
and traditions. Becoming the dominant cultural logic in
the modern world, consumer capitalism and globalization
have overshadowed the value of indigenous wisdom and
the present and future generations.
In a speech given in Machu Picchu, Peru on 12 November
stated the enormous contributions of indigenous peoples
to human civilization and the potential contribution their
knowledge and values can make to poverty eradication,
Special Column
©SirisakChaiyasook
PERPETUATING INDIGENOUS WISDOM
IN A CULTURE OF PEACE
IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
By Witaya Jeradechakul
(Director, SEAMEO Secretariat)
witaya@seameo.org
Women from a tribal group in Myanmar sell goods in a local market.

Special Column
sustainable agriculture, and to the concept of life.
He stated that indigenous peoples have much to
teach the world.
The United Nations continues to promote the
advocacy on indigenous peoples. This year, the
United Nations spearheads the celebration of
the International Day of the World’s Indigenous
Peoples with the theme “Indigenous designs:
celebrating stories and cultures, crafting our own
future”. This year’s celebration emphasizes the
need to listen to the voices of indigenous peoples
and learn from their knowledge in the effort to
foster sustainable and equitable development.
Indigenous wisdom and
traditions in Southeast Asia
Some of the world’s major challenges may
indeed require the wisdom of its most ancient
peoples. Various studies on indigenous wisdom
argued that while nature, spirituality, and
politics are often seen in modern cultures as
separate domains, indigenous peoples in many
parts of the world view these as indivisible.
Generally, indigenous wisdom holds that human
beings are related to nature and that nature
is an integral part of every aspect of man’s life
including politics and religion. For example,
indigenous wisdom views forests as a home that
is essential for survival and the trees as channel
of communication to their ancestors. On the
contrary, modern thinking considers forests as a
Many indigenous cultures in Southeast
Asia and elsewhere in the world tend to put a
premium on compromise, consensus-building
and unity as methods of conflict resolution
and community building. These worldviews
are incorporated in the day-to-day life of the
people, thus promoting a culture of peace and
harmony as documented by researchers in the
following contexts in Malaysia, Indonesia, and
the Philippines.
In Malaysia, an indigenous way of blending
plants to create pleasing or healthful effects in
the preparation of food or the creation of herbal
medicines is called ramuan. Ramuan is believed
to enhance beauty and to promote health.
However, beyond the mere concept of concocted
plants and herbs, ramuan also pertains to
the idea of unity and harmonization of the
community; and the sense of being one.
Indigenous wisdom is almost always passed
down by older generations to the younger ones.
This is the case in the way of life of the Naga
tribe in West Java, Indonesia which to this
day is guided by the wishes of their ancestors.
Land within the boundaries of the Naga village
is owned communally and cutting trees is
prohibited. Rows of houses are terraced using
the same indigenous design that prevents
erosion in the riverbanks. This way of commune
living ensures sustainable recycling and waste
utilization in the community.
Similarly, the Higaonon-Talaandig tribe in
Central Mindanao in the Philippines adheres
to the toman or the planting season which is
usually determined by the phases of the moon.
The people engage in rituals before planting,
its blood over the soil. They never use fertilizers
or pesticides. Observing the toman as prescribed
by their forefathers, prevents them from
indulging in mono-cropping, which is mainly
responsible for uncontrolled pest populations.
The tribesmen plant only for their needs, hence,
pesticides and fertilizers become unnecessary;
and the soil remains rich in nutrients for the next
planting season.
Perpetuating indigenous wisdom
for international understanding
The perpetuation of indigenous wisdom is
a key in promoting peace and international
understanding. This is the same inspiration
resonated in the Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations
General Assembly in September 2007 which has
become the reference point for promoting equity,
inclusion and social justice. Previously, the
Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity was
adopted in 2001; as well as the conventions on
Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
in 2003 and the Protection and Promotion of the
Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005 under
the auspices of UNESCO.
Indeed, indigenous wisdom should be given
a role in addressing the issues confronting
the world today. Consistent with the basic
and shared tenets of compromise, consensus-
building and unity, indigenous wisdom is
supportive of the so-called “culture of peace”, as
prevent conflicts by solving problems through
dialogue and negotiation among individuals,
groups and nations.
With this in mind, development efforts in the
21st century must meet both global and local
needs and aspirations of individual societies.
Thus, these endeavors should not only focus
on modern approaches and circumstances, but
should also take into account the indigenous
wisdom of societies. Respect to and promotion of
traditional knowledge should inspire education,
training, and development of governments and
organizations.
Effective strategies to integrate and promote
indigenous wisdom in teaching and learning
should be shared and discussed such as the
recent formulation of policy framework for
indigenous peoples by the Department of
Education, Philippines. The framework calls
for the adoption of appropriate basic education
pedagogy, content, and assessment through the
integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems
and Practices (IKSPs) in all learning areas and
processes; as well as the adoption of the mother
tongue-based multilingual education learners.
In Thailand, the National Education
Commission under the Ministry of Education
honors “local knowledge experts” for their
contribution to the transmission of local
knowledge to the communities. Other strategies
can include documenting indigenous wisdom
of communities, involving the guardians of
local knowledge in the development of school
curricula and materials, and ensuring that tacit
knowledge is made explicit by recognizing the
value of indigenous wisdom and knowledge.
Without a doubt, promoting and perpetuating
indigenous wisdom enables lifelong learning
in society. Modernity and traditional wisdom
can effectively work hand-in-hand to a truly
sustainable development that will lead to
progress, equity, peace and international
understanding for all.
1.Traditional sustainable farming is
an indigenous wisdom passed down
from generation to generation in many
parts of Asia.
2.The Shwedagon is the most sacred
Buddhist pagoda for the
Myanmar people and is believed to be
2,500 years old.
1
2
The perpetuation of
indigenous wisdom
is a key in promoting
peace and international
understanding.
©RanielJoseMCastañeda
©SirisakChaiyasook

A
sia is a continent of contrasts and
its forests are no exception. While
deforestation continues in the tropics,
China harbors one of the world’s highest rates of
growth in forest cover – though the rates have
slowed, there is still much to do. What is important
to understand as we proceed is that the solution to
both issues is to work with local communities using
environmental education as a key component.
Asia has a long history of deforestation
spanning back at least two centuries. The earliest
well-documented accounts of large-scale land
conversion date back to British occupation of India
during the 19th century, when demand for teak
increased throughout the British Empire, pushing
logging companies deeper and deeper into the
primary forests of India until only a few fragments
were left.
Dwindling Timber Goes East
As timber resources dwindled in the Indian
subcontinent, logging companies shifted eastwards.
By the mid-20th century, Thailand was witnessing
a similar fate, followed by the Philippines in the
1960s and 1970s, and Malaysia in the 1980s. In
the past two decades, deforestation rates sharply
increased in Indonesia, again with an eastward
shift, and more recently still Papua New Guinea
and the Solomon Islands have undergone a similar
pattern of deforestation.
While this seemingly unstoppable deforestation
front has gained pace in the past decades, solutions
have been found locally, both to slow it down and
to remedy the environmental damage it has left in
its wake.
Planting Seeds of Solution
Community-based forest management, also known
as “community forestry,” was unheard of until the
1970s when it sprang in Nepal. Until then, forest
legislation in Asian countries – mostly inherited
from the colonial period – mainly recognized
the state and scientific forestry as the legitimate
steward of forest management. Nepal took the
lead by suggesting that local communities, who
had informally managed their environment for
countless generations, could actually help manage
forests more sustainably and thereby reduce
deforestation.
The idea quickly spread across Asia, notably
thanks to the World Forestry Congress held in
Jakarta in 1978. By the 1980s, it could be found
across South and Southeast Asia, from India to
Java and the Philippines. In Java, two forms of
community forestry have emerged. On the one
hand, the company managing state-owned teak
By Jan L. McAlpine
(Director, United Nations Forum on Forests)
mcalpine@un.org
By Benjamin Singer
(Forest Policy Ofﬁcer, United Nations Forum on Forests)
singerb@un.org
Focus: Lost Forest, Lost Humanity, Lost Spirit
Forests for People, People for Forests:
Lessons from Asia
©UNPhoto/EskinderDebebe
2
1
1. Emilio Goeldi Museum Forest
2. UN Launches 2011 International
Year of Forests
©UNPhoto/JCMcIlwaine

Life Spreads
Now known as Forest Landscape Restoration,
this system has since been implemented in
Ethiopia, with impressive results. More recently
still, on the day that the International Year of
Forests was launched, the government of Rwanda
declared the creation of a border-to-border Forest
Landscape Restoration project across the entire
country. This is the first time that such a project
has encompassed an entire country – and the
“landscape” includes not only forests, but trees
as part of agriculture, subsistence agriculture
planning, including terracing, protection of water
resources, and the importance of wetlands and
other ecosystem planning for all these purposes,
including hydrology. These are critical for the
environment, but they are also critical for the
economy and the people who live on this land.
The Global Partnership on Forest Landscape
Restoration has estimated that 1.6 billion hectares
of forests worldwide are eligible for landscape
restoration. This is land that currently contributes
little to biodiversity, to people or the economy.
But it has the potential to explode our small
visions into amazing results – on a landscape scale
worldwide.
“Forests For People”
The theme of the International Year of Forests,
also known as Forests 2011, is “Forests for People.”
The success stories which have emerged from
different parts of Asia have one thing in common:
local communities were the key actors. Every time,
the solution started with education at the local
level: communities were encouraged to change
agricultural practices to include taungya, terracing
and tree planting.
But local people have also taught decision-
makers a valuable lesson: that working with
rural communities is an essential component
of sustainable forest management. This is why
the relationship between forests and people is
two-ways: forests contribute to over 1.6 billion
livelihoods worldwide; but sustainable forest
management could not exist without local
communities.
©UNPhoto
plantations, Perum Perhutani, now has several
decades’ experience of collaborating with local
villagers, notably through benefit-sharing and an
agricultural practice known as taungya.
Sustainable Solutions Prove Viable
Taungya originated in former Burma (Myanmar),
whereby teak saplings, which need shade to grow,
are planted by a timber company in a field of
annual crops grown by local communities. Villagers
while enabling teak saplings to grow to maturity,
creating a win-win situation for both the timber
company and local people.
In other parts of Java, such as the hilly
landscapes surrounding the UNESCO World
Heritage Site of Borobudur, where land is
traditionally owned by communities themselves,
an alternative form of community forestry was
set up, known as Hutan Rakyat – the people’s
forest. Originally planned as a means of preventing
erosion, local authorities encouraged farmers to
these farmers realized they were potentially sitting
on a goldmine, and that if sustainably managed,
these teak forests could provide a source of regular
income for them and their families.
While both systems of community forestry – on
public and community lands – continue to improve
for the benefits of forests and people, they have
been regarded as highly successful examples of
maintaining forests while contributing to rural
development. Similar systems of community
forestry have since spread to both Africa and Latin
America.
Breathing Life Back into the Barren
In some cases, forests are just no longer there, but
this does not prevent solutions from being found for
sustainable forest management. Further north, on
China’s once fertile Loess Plateau, the government
found an innovative solution to regenerate the
barren landscapes which had suffered from
centuries of farming. Again, communities were
key to the solution as they replaced unsustainable
overgrazing with terrace-building and tree planting.
Within a decade, the dry, dusty plateau had been
turned into a mixed green landscape of forests
increasing fertility and producing clean water for
communities and livestock alike. But the most
impressive aspect of this feat is its size: this $500
million project enabled the incredible recovery of
an area the size of Belgium – no less than 640,000
square kilometers. And, it has made major steps
towards lifting 2.5 million people out of poverty,
an outstanding example of how the world can be
changed.
Focus: Lost Forest, Lost Humanity, Lost Spirit©UNPhotos/EvanSchneider
©UNPhoto/JCMcIlwaine
2
3
1
1. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Participates in Tree Planting
Ceremony at Headquarters
2. IYF Poster
3. UN Launches International Year
of Forests
The success stories which
have emerged from
different parts of Asia have
one thing in common:
local communities were
the key actors.

B
iophilia (bios, Greek for life, philia, love,
mutual love) is the love for life, the love
for nature and the love for forests.
Sadly today, the very people who are heavily
impacting the life support systems of the world
are mainly residing in cities. They live deeply
disconnected with the ecosystems that has for
generations supported them. Furthermore they
ignore the fact that the ecosystems surrounding
them have become fragile, exhausted and
dangerously degraded due to their very own
actions – their proud “way of life.”
So many of us live deeply disconnected from
nature and the planet we live in which nurtures
and carries us. There is an ever increasing
number of young people and children that are
growing up without any contact with nature:
everything is clean, sterile – experiencing nature
as the enemy, as the unknown, the dangerous.
Nature Perceived as the Enemy
Today, people removed from nature fear bugs and
microbes. They use killing agents against insects
and cleaning agents against microbes. By doing
so they destroy the life forces that help our skin
be cleansed and remove the important traits that
make our digestive systems function properly.
Even when we get sick we don’t see the warning
signs: allergies, immune deficiency, sleep
list is long.
Healing Power of Nature
We seem to have forgotten the power of pure
food, fresh water and clean air and the fact that
they all derive from our forests and from complex,
highly developed ecosystems. Seldom have we
sought to go back to nature for joy or consolation,
even though our burdened souls would be healed
with ease.
Do we not know? Do we not care? Do we want
to change? Do we just not know how to change?
Do we know, what truly is a real, pristine forest,
as opposed to secondary (replanted) forests,
commercial plantations, city gardens and long
rows of roadside trees or agricultural landscapes?
Tree’s roots love to reside in the soil they call
home and touch other plant’s roots. They form
Biophilia
the Love of Nature
By Kosima Weber Liu
(Associate Director, Environmental Education Media Project)
kosima@eempc.org
highly functioning plant communities with lively
exchanges between individuals and groups. There
are grandfather and grandmother trees, leading
and supporting trees, protecting and protected
trees, tree nurseries – they are after all, deeply
interconnected.
Tree’s Magic and Secrets
Little is known about the trees’ magic and
secrets: roots can grow and disintegrate within a
single day; trees can grow roots in their crowns.
If in primary forests, soil is collected in the
high canopy branches, trees would grow roots
upwards.
Every plant, animal and insect has an
important, deeply interconnected role to play –
quite like people in relation to their communities.
Lichens, mosses, ferns, animals, butterflies,
hummingbirds, bats and insects, birds and
some of the variety and abundance of life.
Knowing the Forest Takes Time –
Just Like Knowing a Big City.
The shade from forests keep the land cool, thus
allowing for the rain to be easily absorbed into
the deep substrata layers of the soil. They also
slow down the magnitude of rainwater. Forests
are managing and steering complex hydrological
systems, replenishing aquifers, springs and rivers,
forming clouds and seeding rain (by releasing
terpenes). Pristine forests are highly evolved
with complex interactions and highly effective in
regulating the climate. They are master weather
makers.
Forests easily absorb large amounts of
rainwater before filtering it slowly throughout
their system and soil. From there, that water is
reconstituted into the deep layers of the earth
before being reborn into springs. Lively water
streams are cooled by the canopy shade and
energized by boulders and waterfalls in the
forests’ creeks.
Forests also help to improve our water supply,
microclimate and soil fertility of adjacent
agricultural land. Forests thus are crucial in
providing better and more plentiful harvests.
Fields will bring higher and consistent yields
by ecological land. Agricultural forms like
agro-forestry, multi-story cropping and agro-
biodiversity all know the high value of forests for
farming.
Nature as Teacher
Ecology is the life support system for human
beings. We should allow our children (and our
economists) the best possible opportunity to learn
and love it well. Forests are wonderful and wise
teachers. If we want to instill a love for nature in
our children, then nature itself will be the best
teacher and we must start as early as possible.
F o r e s t a n d n a t u r e k i n d e r g a r t e n s
(waldkindergarten) first started in Scandinavia.
Since 1993, they are officially part of Germany’s
waldkindergarten was started in 1968. We now
have registered more than 700 of these nature
schools. In South Korea, they were introduced
during the last two years after the visit of Korean
monk Su Kyong to a forest kindergarten in
Heidelberg, Germany.
Children age 3~6 or 7 will spend all day
outside, equipped with the right clothing to
prepare them against any change in weather.
Highly trained teachers guide and protect them.
They tell the youngsters stories. These teachers
©KosimaWeberLiu
©KosimaWeberLiu
21
1. After Restoration 2009,
Loess Plateau, China
2. Before Restoration 1995,
Loess Plateau China
There is an ever increasing
number of young people
and children that are
growing up without any
contact with nature:
everythingisclean,sterile–
experiencing nature as the
enemy, as the unknown,
the dangerous.

and sciences, and guide games, songs, dances
and investigations. This form of teaching without
walls can be powerful and stimulating. There
is much room for exploration and experiments
while watching and internalizing the natural
processes of nature.
Teaching Tools
Children activities are conducted without
commercially produced toys; instead children
will create their own toys and games or follow
their own research. Their social interaction,
observation and communication skills and the
development of their physical stamina – which
produces a better immune system – agility and
motor-skills will easily outperform children from
more traditional schools.
Among the many advantages are reduced
stress, higher concentration levels, learning to
balance emotions, creative playing and open
curiosity. They also learn about ingenuity,
imagination and understanding of the different
seasons, observing complex interactions,
fostering systems thinking and team forming,
and team playing skills. Humanity is at a
crossroads where we must act as a species. This
is the best way to teach our next generations the
skills needed to lead the world through difficult
times.
Communication with nature’s fellow beings
cannot be underestimated. Curricula are
following the national guidelines. Some schools
have no buildings, some have shelter for extreme
weather, and some have rooms to rest or eat
– depending on local conditions and parental
concerns.
Even universities sometimes conduct classes
outside (like Tagore). Traditional Korean
Academies all had elegant open-wall teaching
halls. There are some universities that are again
experimenting with open door studies.
Nature as Peace Builder
Forests are the cradle of humankind. From earlier
times, forests provided us with the perfect habitat.
Our sister and brother primates still live in forests.
Forests are deeply intertwined with human
cultural development, providing us fuel and
shelter from the dawn of civilization until today.
Wooden tools and instruments, architecture,
carriages and boat building accompanied the
expansion of early and later cultures. Fine
architecture, intricate furniture, highly tuned
musical instruments and complicated models are
still unthinkable without wood.
Pristine forests harbor an abundance of
life forms and life cycles, as well as complex
biochemical processes. Often forests are cited as
holding the answer to many medical problems,
ready to provide humankind with many yet to be
discovered remedies.
But what is often forgotten is the higher values
of forests which rests in their capacity to be intact
and complex functioning systems. A forest’s
value is found in their complex way of showing
the myriad facets and ways of life.
Forest and ecosystem functionality provide the
earth with air, water, fertile soils and regulate and
stabilize the climate. Yet they also teach us living
processes like photosynthesis and higher forms
of communication. It is not surprising that deep
forests nurture our souls and spirits, helping us
grow to our potential on all levels.
Opening the Mind to the Beauty
and Wisdom of the Forest
It is getting harder and harder to find forests
that are intact. For now, the power of showing
what works is a good way to replace how people
perceive ecology. Some media organizations have
1
2
1. Before Restoration 1995,
Loess Plateau, China
2. After Restoration 2009,
Loess Plateau China
helped in disseminating information about the
degraded ecosystems and how they can indeed
come back to life in a rather short period of time.
Multi-media presentations, documentary films,
public speaking can all be powerful tools to
communicate the resilience of nature, ecosystem
functions and the need for a renewed value
system for humankind. We have documented the
rehabilitation of forests and grassland all over the
world, especially in the Chinese Loess Plateau, in
Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.
Showing people what works by replacing old
habits with positive ones is a truly empowering
and effective tool.
Protecting and replanting forests, protecting
and restoring degraded ecosystems are essential
to our present and future health, stability and
peace. Observing and understanding how nature
teaches us a different way of time and ownership
can give new incentives for designing our future.
We are all here for a short time in a long strand
of generations before and after us. All we call
our own is only given to us on loan, to be handed
on to future generations. Asian traditions can
look back seven generations to understand their
personal lineage. American-Indian traditions
teach us to observe our actions because they will
affect seven generations down from us.
Economies Flourish under
Healthy Ecosystems
Creating a platform for evolving cross-
generational knowledge and values will bring
us back to a time tested perspective. Protecting
global common wealth is to protect our own
well-being. Forests are our life support system
and they are the basis from which all our global
wealth is derived. Once we include ecosystem
functions into our economy, our economies
will become larger, healthier and more stable,
for the global common wealth.
Creating and maintaining peace must be based
on a shared vision, which will create the basis
for collaboration and trust. Finding common
ground and protecting the world's common
wealth will lead to an overall security based on
environmental security.
The earth’s ecosystem function is a vision
easily shared and clearly understandable as
global human understanding.
ECOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING provides
the core principle that will lead humankind to
live a successful and beautiful life, providing an
ever evolving future for all beings.
ECOLOGICAL SECURITY is an absolute
determinant for stability, security and peace.
©KosimaWeberLiu©KosimaWeberLiu
©SteveTran

T
he grandfather said to the boy, “Look at
the bug,” while pointing towards a beetle
lying motionless on the sidewalk. The
boy replied, “Oh, its battery must be dead.”
This story has come to represent an all too
familiar scene that threatens to redefine how
today’s younger generation perceives nature. We
are living in a world driven by unrelenting forces
that constantly act to distance our connection
with nature. Today, one would be hard-pressed
to find children choosing the forest of their
backyard over the virtual forest within video
games that have come to represent a form of
hyper-reality. They are often discouraged to play
in the woods by their parents and teachers, who
may fear the forest as dangerous and unsafe
places for children. In fact, if there ever was a
demand for such natural playground alternatives,
a city would not be able to adequately provide the
necessary trees and forests due to priorities set
by urbanization and high density development.
Forests as Building Blocks for
Civilization
Up until recent history, human beings have
primarily been forest dependent creatures. The
forest was where we gathered seeds, fruits and
other edible parts of plants for food. This was
where we collected firewood for cooking and
heating. We obtained timber from the trees to
build our shelters, and our ancestors derived
their medicines from plants growing in the forest.
So many aspects of human life that has depended
upon trees have come to shape the inevitable
evolution of humanity. In fact, the whole of
human civilization has been built upon forests.
Even after fossil fuel was introduced and many
of these things were replaced by industrially or
chemically processed products, forests still play a
major role for our quality of living as it provides
clean air and water, and many other intangible
services. So we are still dependent upon forests
even in these modern days. Forests have made us
what we are today.
As deforestation carries on around the world,
the value of the remaining forests continues to
grow. Southeast Asia used to have 25 percent
of the world’s tropical rainforests. Now more
than two-thirds of its original forests have been
destroyed. The Philippines were fully covered in
the thick tangles of tropical rainforests up until
only a half century ago. Thailand used to boast
its high valued teak timber forests but continued
logging has caused severe flooding and other
disastrous damages to the country. Ironically,
both these countries that were at one time
By Tak Kwang-Il
(Principal, Nature Walks Education)
leotak@shaw.ca
©KoreaForestandCultureSociety
©TakKwang-Il
Forests ‘ ’ Us
1. South Korean family participating in a
nature program
2. Inteior of Tropical Rainforest in Cairns
Australia
2
1

heavily forested have now been forced to rely on
imported timber. Fast growing foreign trees such
as coconut palm and pineapple trees thrive where
ancient tropical rainforests once proudly stood
just a generation ago.
These plantations of monocultures cannot
support other organisms and hinder biological
diversity. As the old forests follow a terminal
downward trend, so does the local human
cultures that evolved from them. Forests have
allowed for the creation of unique cultural
landscapes within countries. Without forests,
the landscape is disrupted and the
them disappears.
Learning from Nature
How do we reconnect our younger
generations to nature when they
screens day in and day out?
In the past, education was
focused on training good citizens.
For apparent reasons, how we treat women,
minorities, and children have always taken higher
ecosystems, and biological diversity. However,
as society continues to make progress in those
areas, education needs to focus on training good
residents. A good resident being defined as one
who can work for the conservation of his or her
community of whose members includes not only
Forests provide students from all grades with
excellent hands-on learning experiences. Instead
of sitting and listening in the classroom, students
can learn by seeing, listening, smelling and
tasting real living organisms for themselves.
Forests are an excellent classroom for people
of all ages. Forests are a space where we can
realize our inseparable relationship with nature.
Forests are where we can draw inspiration for
models of sustainability and integrity. The forest
ecosystem and its function
are the exemplary ideal for
environmentally friendly
manufacturing, design and
processes that we can mimic
to solve current environment
problems. Forests are also
a place where we can find
ourselves standing in awe of its
beauty.
Many European countries
have experimented with an educational program
offered entirely outdoors. No matter the weather,
teachers lead the day for activities outdoors,
exploring forests, wading streams, visiting
farms, touching plants, insects and animals.
These programs are particularly popular among
kindergarteners. Rain or shine, kids play outside
and get exposed to their natural environment.
A study reports that kindergarteners who
graduated from such programs grow healthier
physically, and happier socially and emotionally
than those who attended kindergartens situated
mostly indoors.
Beauty to Duty
One of most important things we should learn from
forests is appreciating its beauty. The beauty we
experience in a forest is different from the one we
a special beauty through our whole body when
connecting with the forest whereas the aesthetical
experiences from indoor galleries are restricted
to visual stimulation. As we appreciate the beauty
of something, we tend to develop a sense of
stewardship for the protection and preservation of
it. So appreciating beauty eventually helps people
develop a sense of duty for nature.
Developing a skill to appreciate natural beauty
especially at early childhood is a powerful means
for the conservation of nature. Michelangelo’s
spectacular ceiling paintings of the Sistine Chapel
are considered a priceless world heritage that
society has appreciated for centuries. Angkor Wat
in Cambodia is another example of man-made
beauty and wonder. We expend a great amount
of resources to preserve these world cultural
heritages but we fail to see that the tropical
rainforests in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea
and other countries in Southeast Asia as equally
precious and worth preserving. Those tropical
rainforests have evolved over millennia and
are much older than any human built temples
and artifacts. As long as we really appreciate
the special beauty of forests, nobody would
destroy them. One would not dare consider the
demolition of the Sistine Chapel or Angkor Wat
in favor of homogenous concrete buildings and
glass towers. Why should one treat the logging
of primary forests for the development of
plantations be any different?
1. Nature program - making toy bugs
with wood
2.Voluteers from S. Korea planting trees
3.Tropical Rainforest in Cairns Australia
4.Toy bugs completed
5. A Green School program for high
school students run by a private
company in Korea
2
4
3
1
5
©TakKwang-Il©TakKwang-Il
©TakKwang-Il
As we appreciate the
beauty of something,
we tend to develop a
sense of stewardship
for the protection and
preservation of it. So
appreciating beauty
eventually helps people
develop a sense of duty for
nature.

N
ow it is up to us to see whether such
Indian thinking and traditions are of
any help today to maintain a more eco-
friendly life style for a sustainable future!
In India people bow to a tree, just as they do
to a river, mountain, and deity or to elders and
teachers they respect. They believe that this
humility helps them grow in knowledge and
wisdom.
We all know that Buddha gained enlightenment
under a peepal tree, better known as bodhi
(enlightenment) tree. It remains puzzling how
the banks of the Ganges River, cold unlivable
caves of the Himalayas, deep forests of the
Vindhya hills, produced so many historical sages
and great teachers in India.
Nature Worship is Not Blind
Etymologically, the word “nature” in the Sanskrit
language is prakriti which means “before
creation.” Indians equated this prakriti with
garva (womb), a prerequisite space for creation
of immense possibilities, and thus, has now
accepted nature as “The Goddess Mother.”
Modern science has been solving many
mysteries of nature. A scientist observing
a sprouting bean seed concludes without
hesitation that the sprout came from the seed.
Yet, a spiritualist would observe the same
phenomenon differently. He would notice that
the stem comes out along with the seed; the seed
covered cracks open into two halves bigger than
before. One end of the stem starts bearing leaves
and the other modifies into roots. Where does
this life force come from in a dormant seed?
I n d i a n s a g e s e x p l a i n t h a t i t c o m e s
from shunyata, meaning “emptiness” or
“nothingness.” This philosophy is a very
important part of the Indian psyche.
The spiritual approach to life and nature is
quite common in India. In folklore, the forest
appears as Van Devta (forest god), the keeper of
nature and tiger as Van Raj (king of the jungle),
the deliverer of justice in nature.
Furthermore, every deity in India is
fruit, animal or bird.
Nature’s Purpose
If goddess Durga rides a lion, her son Ganesh,
the elephant god, rides a mouse. Vishnu is
associated with shesh nag (Cobra) and the red
lotus; Shiva with the white bull and the white
flower. Indian tradition took care to recognize
the wisdom that everything in nature has a
purpose and human beings should not interfere
with it unnecessarily. Good and bad is just
the duality of mind, not of nature. That is why
also learned the virtue of compassion. They felt
somehow that sustaining one’s life by performing
a lame excuse.
Under such a living environment, Indian
Eco-diversity and Life Style
in Indian Tradition
By Alok Kumar Roy
(Professor, Department of India,
Pusan University of Foreign Studies)
roy.alok12@gmail.com
©ParkJongWoo/APCEIU
Villagers living in a forest in Orissa
Kuttiya Khond tribe

children learn to perceive everything in nature
as sensitive, alive, and growing souls that
experience pain and happiness as well. Of course,
the senses that those mountains, trees, birds and
other species possess may not be as developed
as that of human beings. But morality would
demand that if human beings want to reach
for the sixth sense, beyond the five senses they
already possess, they should not deny the same
privilege to others.
Creator Creates Creation
Ancient gurus (great teachers) also said that “The
Creator” and “His Creation” cannot be separated.
If one worships “The Creator” and not all “His
Creations,” it would lead to a dangerous path of
self destruction. In nature, the creator and the
creation cannot be chosen separately as we do in
the case of artist and art, painter and paintings,
potter and pots. The dynamic relationship
between the two in Indian tradition is explained
as a “Dance of the Divine”: the dancer and the
dance cannot be separated. If the dancer stops,
the dance will stop too. And when the dance
stops, it will be the end.
Thus, the idea of tolerance and non-violence
towards “one and all” had wider acceptance in
India. There are many followers of Jainism in
India who practice extreme non-violence even
today. Furthermore, if Gandhi could successfully
lead a nonviolent movement against the British
rule; it was because the masses were historically
trained to handle this.
Wishing Upon Symbolic Trees
The peepal tree is one of the longest living,
revered trees in India. People believe that during
its long life, it listens silently to so many words
of wisdom that in itself becomes a messenger
of enlightenment. Call it blind faith, but certain
trees in local folklores are named incarnations or
abodes of particular deities or Gurus. Believers
hang colored ribbons or tie threads on trees as
their symbolic prayers and wishes.
Ancient scriptures highlight the benefits of
planting certain trees and plants. Of course
sometimes the language is mysterious. Padma
Purana scripture mentions that those who
planted tulsi (Indian basil) forests did not need
to perform Vishnu Yagya (ritual fire offerings
to lord Vishnu, the god of preservation) as each
such action is equivalent to 100 such Yagyas.
Elsewhere, in Bhahvishya Purana, “if one
plants one peepal tree (ficus religiosa), one
neem (azadracht indica), one bargad (ficus
bengalencis), 10 imli (tamarindus indica), 3 kaith
(limonia acidissima), 3 vilva (aegle marmalos),
3 aonia (Indian gooseberry or phyllanthus
embilica) and mango (mangifera indica), one
would never go to hell.”
Healing through Medicinal Plants
Ayurveda is another well-known ancient
scripture dealing with spiritual healing and
knowledge of medicinal plants. It tells in great
detail how leaves, flowers, shade, root, bark,
wood, fragrance, gum, charcoal, buds of plants
and trees, with a nature friendly lifestyle, can
help us lead a healthy spiritual existence and is
readily available. The tradition of using herb and
spices in Indian food is not just for taste but for
medicinal value too.
In the early 1970s, the Chipko (embrace the
tree) Movement, launched in the foothills of
the Himalayas, caught the imagination of the
world’s ecologists and environmentalists. Village
women embraced and clung to trees when the
government contractors came to deforest the
region in the name of commercial development. It
not only raised a political debate on development
but also on the ancient wisdom of sustainable
ecological life in India. It also helped realize that
modern day governance does not only maximize
growth but also sustains the future.
Now it is up to us to see whether such Indian
thinking and traditions are of any help today
to maintain a more eco-friendly life style for a
sustainable future.
Indian tradition took care
to recognize the wisdom
that everything in nature
has a purpose and human
beings should not interfere
with it unnecessarily. Good
and bad is just the duality
of mind, not of nature.
1. Forest in Orissa
2. Bonda tribe woman
1
2

Best Practices
©WajuppaTossa©WajuppaTossa
I
n 1992, I discovered that the sky was falling;
children of northeast Thailand (Isan) refused to
speak their local dialects. I became quite alarmed. If
children did not speak the language that would mean that
it would soon die. If language dies, other cultural heritage
embedded in the language such as poetry, stories,
proverbs and sayings will also die.
In 1993, I did a survey in four elementary schools in
Mahasarakham. I reconfirmed that my fear was not a
false alarm. Fifty percent of the children surveyed could
not speak a local dialect and did not wish to learn to speak
that dialect. Only one child could name an Isan folktale.
Most of them knew “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “Little
Red Riding Hood,” and “Three Little Pigs.” The only
child who did know an Isan folktale, knew the story of
the “Twelve Sisters,” a Thai/Lao folktale. But she learned
the story, not from her family, but from a television
drama series. At that point, I felt like the sky was falling. I
decided to take the role of a little hummingbird as it holds
up the sky. I set up a storytelling project attempting to
counter the loss of the Isan local dialects and folktales and
to engender pride in local cultural heritage among young
children.
The Beginning of the Beginning
In 1995, I launched a project titled “Storytelling, A
Means to Revitalize a Disappearing Language and
Culture in Northeast Thailand” with almost no funding.
Mahasarakham University offered me a small budget of
30,000 Baht ($750) to work on the project and to take
time off for school visits from 1995~1998. I sent copies
of the project proposal to many governmental and non-
for the three year project. I had planned to recruit 20
university students from Mahasarakham University and
from colleges nearby to train them to collect, select, adapt,
and tell stories. Once trained, they would tell stories to
We would visit each school twice. For the first visit,
we would survey children’s attitudes and knowledge
of the local dialects and folktales, tell stories, and host
storytelling workshops for the local teachers. There
would be a period of an academic year between each
visit. During the interval, the children were asked to
return home and collect stories from their families and
communities. The teachers would encourage the children
to record the stories in their notebooks while instructing
some children to retell outstanding stories. For the second
visit, we would conduct the survey again before the
storytelling session would begin. This time, the children
were asked to share with us their stories from home.
The performance would be in a form of “story swap.” We
would start the ball rolling by telling a story or two before
some children began telling their stories.
The Budget Begins
From each school, we would award prizes to two
storytellers and two story-collectors who joined the
storytelling camp with their parents or teachers during
the summer break without charge. For the entire three
year plan, the budget came up to around 2 million baht
(about $50,000 at that time). We received no funding
from any governmental organization when we began the
project. Instead, we received partial funding to cover the
training of 20 university students and for storytelling
trips from non-governmental organizations like the
James W. Thompson Foundation, The Tourist Authority
of Thailand, and Mobile Oil Company. Later, we received
support from the Fulbright Foundation who sent Dr.
Margaret Read MacDonald to train us on how to collect,
select, adapt, and tell stories. During the span of two
years, MacDonald visited all schools twice.
Throughout the three years, we organized three
storytelling workshops for interested people, three
storytelling festivals, and two storytelling camps at the
end of the school year. At those workshops, parents and
children spent three days together, learning new stories
and sharing old ones. We incorporated folktales and
storytelling as well as children’s literature and literature
for young people in two courses in our bachelor’s degree
program: Children’s Literature and Independent Study
in Literature (Folktales and Storytelling). We have been
offering these two courses every semester whereby in each
semester, 5~50 students registered. We have passed on
our ideas for local, cultural preservation and revitalization
to each group of students. Hopefully, these students will
Project Propels into Mainstream
Our project became better known and was featured on
television news and programs, namely, Thung Saeng
Tawan (The Field of Sunshine) on Channel 3 by Payai
Creation Company. The John F. Kennedy Foundation of
Thailand as well as the students’ parents granted partial
funding for us to bring three groups of outstanding
storytelling-students from the project to tell stories in
the United States in 1996, 1997, and 1998. MacDonald
provided accommodations and food for these three
groups of students.
The project was successful. The number of children
who could speak their local dialects increased and some
children shared many wonderful folktales from home.
REVITALIZING FOLKTALES
AND STORYTELLING
TRADITIONS
By Wajuppa Tossa
(Associate Professor, Western Languages and Linguistics
Department, Mahasarakham University)
wajuppa@yahoo.com
The Fight to Preserve a Piece of Ourselves
Elephant and Hummingbird
A Chinese Folktale Retold by Dr. Margaret Read MacDonald
In Peace Tales: Folktales Around the World to Talk About..
back on the ground.
The bird’s tiny feet were raised up into the air.
“What on earth are you doing, Hummingbird?” asked the
elephant.
The hummingbird replied, “I have heard that the sky
might fall today.
If that should happen, I am ready to do my bit in holding
it up.”
The elephant laughed and mocked the tiny bird,
“Do you think THOSE tiny feet could hold up the SKY?”
“Not alone,” admitted the hummingbird,
“but each must do what he can and this is what I can do.”
1. Storytelling in
Singapore with
students
2. Storytelling
camp for
children,
parents and
teachers
1
2

Best Practices
After the project ended in 1998, I continued working
on revitalizing local dialects, folktales, and storytelling
traditions. In getting the ideas across, I have tried in every
way possible to garner people’s attention.
In 2000, I collected and analyzed folktales told in the
“Tellabration 2000: Storytelling Festival.” In 2001, I
was invited to set up a Lao Folklore Course for Northern
Illinois University in the United States. The website was
uploaded at www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/folklore.
Next Phase Begins
In 2002~2003, I conducted a research project,
experimenting with a group of secondary school students
on the use of folktales, storytelling, and picture books
in the teaching and learning of the English language.
In 2002, I was introduced to a semi-non-governmental
organization in Laos called Participatory Development
Training Center (PADETC). While there, I trained their
staff and youth volunteers to collect Lao folktales and tell
stories during their various projects. In 2004, I worked
on a reading promotion project among preschoolers by
using folktales, storytelling, children’s plays and games,
and picture books. In 2005~2006, I tried to use folktales,
storytelling, picture books, and children’s literature to
teach English to first year undergraduate students at
Mahasarkaham University.
Memory Loss, Folktales Lost?
In the process of working on these projects, my students
taught me about storytellers in their communities.
In 2007, with financial support from Mahasarakham
University, I set out to identify and collect traditional
folktales in northeast Thailand and Laos. In this project,
I discovered that traditional tellers were older in age
and began to lose their memories. Hence, some stories
collected were incomplete. Some storytellers who used
to be able to recite stories in verse in folk singing tunes
forgot the words and tunes. From these disheartening
discoveries I set up another project, “Revitalization of
Folktales and Storytelling Tradition by Young People,”
in 2008. I incorporated this project into my two courses:
Children’s Literature and Folktales and Storytelling.
Each semester, students registered in these courses
would be trained on how to collect folktales, how to
select, how to adapt, and how to tell them in attractive
styles. After their initial training, they would then
train secondary school students to collect folktales and
select, adapt, and tell them in story-theater styles. Each
semester, my department grants a small budget to
work with four schools. Each semester, university and
secondary school where trained. Hopefully, these young
people will take-up the role of preserving and revitalizing
local cultural heritage in place of the elder generations.
Spreading Preservation
Since 2001, I, along with some storytelling students,
have accepted invitations to participate in local and
international storytelling events. We have been featured
storytellers in several storytelling conferences and
festivals in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia,
United States, and recently Edinburgh, Scotland. In
each place we visited, we would encourage others to be
aware of the significance of local cultural heritage and
the necessity of preserving and revitalizing these cultural
aspects such as local arts, music, dance, theater and
drama, and most importantly, folktales and storytelling.
In conclusion, in today’s world, change may be
inevitable. We may not be able to stop the fading of the
different communities’ local cultural heritages. We may
not be able to stop traditional storytellers from no longer
being with us. We may not be able to hold on to the art of
traditional storytelling. But we cannot just stand and wait
for these invaluable aspects of our society and history to
disappear. We need to do what we can to collect these
folktales from the older generations and to prolong the
art of storytelling by instilling the love and pride of local
cultural heritage in our younger generations. Let us all
try to do what we can to encourage our young people to
take part in the process of preservation and revitalization
of local cultural heritage – like the little hummingbird,
trying to hold up the falling sky.
S
ustainable development is a global problem
that incorporates three aspects of development:
economic growth, social development and
environmental protection to meet today’s needs without
interfering with those of the future. It is an urgent and
inevitable trend in the evolution of human society.
Therefore the world's nations, including Vietnam, have
committed to build such an agenda for development.
On August 17, 2004, the government of Vietnam
approved "The Strategic Orientation for Sustainable
Development in Vietnam," a framework that sets the
legal foundation for ministries, sectors, organizations,
and relevant individuals to follow as they implement
sustainable development policies in Vietnam in the 21st
century.
Since 2005, based on that strategy, the government
of Vietnam has issued the Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development (2005~2014) to respond to
the action program initiated by the United Nations, in
order to provide younger generations with the knowledge,
skills, and attitude toward sustainable development of the
country.
Today’s Education for Sustainable
Development
Vietnam's law has gradually been consolidated and
strengthened to create a basic framework for the
sustainable development of the country in which
legislation on economic development, environment,
poverty alleviation and gender issues are considered
priority areas. Economic development policy based on
principles of sustainable development has had a great
EDUCATIONAL RENOVATION-
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT IN VIETNAM
Dr. Do Thi Bich Loan
(Deputy Director, Research Center for Education Management,
Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences)
loaneta@yahoo.com
©VNIES©VNIES
©WajuppaTossa
1. A story-
theater contest
in the festival
1
1
1. A Classroom
in Ethnic
minority area
in Vietnam
2.Going to school
by a horse
in the North
mountainous
area in
Vietnam
1
2

impact on Vietnam’s economy which is growing at a high,
stable speed. In 2009, growth was 5.32 percent, and
average income per capita has increased for 10 consecutive
years (from $337 to $1,200 from 1997 to 2010).
Renovating Education
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has
been active in carrying out activities to promote its basic
educational reform, to raise student and community
awareness of sustainable development, and to promote
training to develop human resources for the nation’s long-
term development.
Under the peace education curriculum, the Vietnamese
government will provide knowledge on interdependent
relationships in solving international problems, link
teaching and learning with daily community life, enable
students to possess the habits and skills to preserve
their surrounding environment and provide people
the awareness of respecting the cultural and mental
differences between the world’s nations.
Environmental education is another area where the
Vietnamese government will carry out activities by
providing students with knowledge of laws and policies
on environmental protection and knowledge of how to
voluntarily protect the environment themselves, and train
teaching staff, researchers and technological managers on
environmental protection.
The third area, education for sustainable development
of the economy and society will tackle the country’s
poverty rate which has declined significantly in recent
years but is still unequal amongst regions and across
ethnic groups. Therefore, to develop the social economy
and to escape from a poverty circle, we must invest in
education development and improve the intellectual level
of the community.
Other discrepancies such as gender balance and gaps
between urban and rural areas also exist. Though gender
balance is basically achieved in primary and secondary
schools, there are still disparities in the upper levels of
secondary schools. The gap in access to education between
urban and rural areas has gradually narrowed, but in rural
areas the rate of education participation is increasing
mainly in primary and secondary schools only.
Educational Challenges
Social economic policies focus more on rapid economic
growth and social stability than on natural resource
sustainability, environmental protection, socio-economic
planning and developing processes, while environmental
each other.
Also, the poverty rate remains high and there is a
big wealth gap between rural and urban areas. The
gap between rich, poor and social stratification tends
to increase rapidly due to the increase of population,
shortage of jobs, high poverty rate, low quality of human
resources, and quantity and quality of technical workers
does not meet the requirements of the labor market. A
number of social evils such as drug addiction, prostitution,
HIV / AIDS also create risk of social instability and
destruction of the ecological balance.
Finally, due to indiscriminate exploitation and wasteful
usage of natural resources, environmental and ecological
imbalances more often appear.
Educational Renovation
Vietnam’s education has gained important achievements
from current initiatives but there are still shortfalls that
have kept social and economic development goals from
being met. Knowing the importance of education for
sustainable development, Vietnam has confirmed that
the goal of “The Education Development Strategic Plan
for 2011~2020” will focus on improving the quality of
education and rapidly developing human resources.
Education should be developed in scale and structure to
ensure social equity in education and lifelong learning
opportunities for every citizen.
Perspective for 2020
As education is the decisive factor in social development
and sustainable economic growth, it should be renovated
to create equal opportunities and lifelong learning for
everyone, especially ethnic minorities and the poor.
This general objective is exemplified through specific
targets:
Universal education for children 5 years old by 2015
Arrange for 99 percent of children to attend primary
school at the right age by 2020
Have 95 percent of children attend lower secondary
education at the right age, with a special focus on
ethnic minorities and female children.
Have 70 percent of disabled children enroll in schools
by 2020
Children affected by HIV given proper conditions and
support to attend schools
Reach a 98 percent literacy rate for persons aged 15
and over
Attain 99 percent literacy rate for women and men
aged 15 to 35
Solutions for the Future
To successfully implement educational innovation towards
sustainable development, Vietnam should continue to
implement comprehensive solutions.
First, the government needs to increase investment,
strengthen propaganda and educate people to raise
awareness of conserving their natural heritage, national
history, and ethnic culture; raise awareness and change
the behavior towards population, reproductive health, and
family planning.
Next, the Vietnamese government should look
at integrating cultural, social and environmental
development planning with economic development
planning; innovate management systems towards capacity
building, and the raise awareness and responsibility of the
local authorities about sustainable development.
Third, there needs to be work done to develop
educational and vocational training systems,
strengthening links between educational and vocational
training systems with the labor market and employment
promotion to narrow the gap of socio-economic
development between rural and urban areas.
Fourth, to stably develop education for
ethnic minorities
The government should also look at strengthening gender
equality to improve population quality in physical, mental,
and spiritual aspects; improving the role of women in
social and economic development activities as well as
environmental protection.
Last but not least, to mobilize the population so that it
contributes to developing education in a diverse manner
1. Hoang Thu Pho primary students
in Bac Ha District, Laocai Provine in the North
mountainous area in Vietnam
2. Kindergarten in Simacai District, Laocai Province
Vietnam
1
2
1. Kindergarten in the
North mountainous area
in Vietnam
2. Kindergarten in the
North mountainous area
in Vietnam
1 2
Best Practices
©VNIES
©VNIES
©VNIES©VNIES

EIU Happy School
F
oundation for Tolerance International
(FTI) is a non-governmental organization
which works on conflict prevention
and resolution and promotion of culture, peace
and nonviolence. During the year, FTI has
implemented more than 100 projects in various
areas, with one being Peace Education.
Education plays one of the major roles in a
person’s life. It is not only a way of obtaining
knowledge, but it also contributes to a person’s
positive qualities. It raises a person’s senses
of tolerance, equality, responsibility, peace
and solidarity. Above all these attributes, it is
necessary to promote Peace Education among
youth.
Peace Reaches Out to Youth
In this regard, FTI and the International
Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) in March
2010, started the Youth Theatre for Peace project
(YTP). The aim of this project is to promote
sustainable peace at the community level
through changes in behavior and the way young
people are viewed and view their surroundings.
The approach used in Youth Theatre for Peace
project is based using art. This methodology uses
theatre in order to involve more members of the
communities to the process of identifying and
solving local problems.
In the framework of the project, the Summer
Theatre Camp was organized on the shore of
Lake Issyk-Kul and targeted talented students
from Chui and Batken regions. One hundred
students from different schools were selected
to participate in this camp. This was a great
opportunity for these students to learn new
techniques and technologies of Youth Theatre for
Peace. Specialists from England and Kyrgyzstan,
and actors of the Sakhna Theatre, with the
help of Peace Corps volunteers and American
University in Central Asia students conducted
special training for the camp’s participants.
Bridge Building
Within 10 days, participants were studying,
working, playing and becoming friends. They
created several teams with each team preparing
and performing their own script. That means
that children were directors and actors at the
same time. Instead of playing fragments of
classical literary works, they were directing
actual challenges teenagers face today in urban
and local schools such as school bullying
problems and misunderstandings between
parents and children, just to name a couple.
After performing these plays, the participants
discussed, presented and attempted to solve
problems raised in the student’s own plays.
Thus, children developed their own leadership
skills, learned to think logically and worked as a
team while developing communication skills and
demonstrating their creativity.
Gratitude Goes a Long Way
At the end of the camp children received
their drama activities in their own communities,
schools, and to involve more people to discuss
community issues and jointly search for
solutions.
Youth Theatre for Peace project shows that
it is possible to achieve significant results in
solving common problems. By doing so, this
teaches children about consensus and dialogue
building, and teaches them nonviolent methods
©FoundationforToleranceInternational
©FoundationforToleranceInternational
By Radya Kadyrova
(Director, Foundation for Tolerance International)
kadyrovafti@yahoo.com
YOUTH THEATRE FOR
“PEACE”
1. Participants of the Summer
Theatre Camp
2. Participants of the Summer
Theatre Camp
1
2

32 SangSaeng 2011 Summer 2011 Summer SangSaeng 3332 SangSaeng 2011 Summer 2011 Summer SangSaeng 33
Interview
You have led several grassroots initiatives that
have transformed into internationally recognized
movements. What would you say was the catalyst for
bringing these local and community initiatives on to
the global scale?
I realized that we live in one world and that peace, justice,
and sustainability are the three pillars for making a good
world. I wrote a poem for a book called “Prayers for a
Thousand Years” where I described this universality in
these words – “we all drink from one water, we all breathe
one air, we rise from one ocean and we live under one sky”.
It is this universality based on the triple pillars of peace,
justice, and sustainability that drives and inspires me.
The global campaigning began with protecting,
promoting, and supporting the practice of breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding was a universality based on five
fundamentals – it was medicine, it was nutrition, it was
environmentally friendly, it was economic and it was
about the beautiful bond between mother and child. Yet
over the last century this good practice was undermined
by corporations greedy for profit and millions of lives
of infants were affected by it. We found that this was
both a local and global issue and we build a solidarity
movement bringing together the diversity of groups that
were included – women, health professions, development,
consumer, environment, trade unions, and religious
bodies.
It was just amazing how a simple issue like breastfeeding
created a global movement that led to the United Nations
and in particular the World Health Organisation (WHO)
and the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) to
adopt for the first time in history an international code
that addresses the issue.
This solidarity and experience of the breastfeeding
movement was the base for developing other global
movements around toxic chemicals and health such as
the Pesticide Action Network International(PAN) and
the Health Action International(HAI) among others. We
built on these assets of the empathy. We built on these
organizational links working on the breastfeeding issue.
There was this transcending trust, a bank of skills and the
larger feeling of peace and justice that drove a major wave
of civil society movements around public interest issues
during the following years.
What made you become interested in consumer
practice issues and how do they correspond with a
culture of peace/EIU?
Protecting the consumer was the most basic and universal
of issues. Every one of us is a consumer. We consume the
environment – the air, the water, the forest. We consume
goods and services from both governments and business.
We consume “free” things and we consume things we have
to buy or pay for. We consume things that affect people
lives and the environment.
It was this fundamental comprehensiveness that drew
me to the movement – it had that universality, local and
global. It was not just about “value for money” but more
so “value for people” - from poverty to industrial safety
– and “value for the environment”. This triple wisdom I
often describe as inner peace, social peace and eco-peace.
Harming our body, hurting others and damaging the
environment are all about violence and I address them by
speaking about this larger peace.
And because this approach is universal, it fosters a
global caring movement based on a simple yet profound
fundamental – peace.
Are the current initiatives that bolster consumer
activism in areas such as infant feeding, pesticide
hazards, pharmaceuticals, health, etc. currently
capable of keeping up with a world that is rapidly
turning towards globalization?
It is and will be a continuing challenge. We must develop
movements that are sustainable, full of meaning and
interesting activities. Two things are most important –
youth and the new information technologies. Nurturing
people power anywhere, anytime, anyone is a great
new force for a better world if we can promote clear set
of activities that mean real things to real people. And
investing in youth is nurturing the future.
The other great challenge is ensuring the UN agencies
the peoples of the world…” A great concern worldwide is
also to ensure that the UN is not manipulated by powerful
governments with self-interest and commercial interests
driven by greed.
The greatest power for citizen’s movements is always
remembering and strengthening the notion that little
people doing little things in little places can change the
world. It has happened and will happen over and over
again.
What sustainable development practices do you think
are the most important for developing countries to
adopt to support a culture of peace?
thinking on sustainable development. We developed over
a decade ago in Penang, Malaysia, and the first time in
the developing world, a two year participatory and action
programme called “The Sustainable Penang Initiative”.
We identified what I call the “Panchasila of Sustainable
NURTURING THE FUTURE
– THE POWER OF PEOPLE
An Interview With Professor Anwar Fazal

34 SangSaeng 2011 Summer 2011 Summer SangSaeng 3534 SangSaeng 2011 Summer 2011 Summer SangSaeng 35
Interview
Development” (Panchasila is a Sanskrit word for “five
principles”) - social justice, ecological sustainability,
economic productivity, popular participation and cultural
vibrancy.
For each of these we had clusters of key people from
civil society, business, and government going through a
very participatory process with skilled mapping together
on issues, priorities, and action plans. We developed a
“People’s Report.” We involved young and creative people
and also those with disabilities actively in the process. And
we made a difference.
As a result of this, the government of Penang’s next
development plan for the decade no longer talked about
“panchasila” – of development as the guiding philosophy.
“green” state and has begun with strong action on the use
of plastic disposable bags.
One of your initiatives, the Taiping Peace initiative
in Malaysia promotes a culture of peace with the
environment. What does peace mean to you?
We were inspired by the UNESCO Culture of Peace
program. I grew up in this very special town called
“Taiping” which means “everlasting peace” in the Chinese
language. It was also a town specially constructed over a
hundred years ago to mark peace among warring factions
over mining of the metal tin, which was then a very
strategic material because the canning industry for storing
and preserving food has developed – it was a revolution
like the bicycle, the car and the personal computer, to be
able to buy food in cans a hundred years ago. This town a
hundred years ago restored its mining pools to make them
into a lake garden. It passed laws to protect the coastal
mangroves. It protected a mountain next to it by making it
a forest reserve so that today you can walk from the town
center into pristine forests. The town was also a military
garrison and has a beautifully maintained war cemetery
and memorial that reminds us about the horrors of war.
All this inspired me to launch “The Taiping Peace
Initiative” bringing together four groups - the Universiti
Sains Malaysia, Malaysia’s leading university and whose
vision is working for sustainable futures, the United
Nations, the town council and civic groups.
We built on the simplicity and power of the triple
wisdom of peace with ourselves, peace with others and
peace with the environment.
We used the UNESCO related and already developed “99
ways of making peace” as the “doing” platform. It has very
practical doable action under six headings:
I have not found a better document for a simple but
comprehensive platform for doing “peace”.
From the Taiping Peace Initiative we launched the
Malaysian Interfaith Network and from that the Global
Ethic project and the “Street of Harmony” in George
Town ,Penang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its
outstanding universal values and which the former
President of India, Dr. Kalam, called a street that can be
a school for intercultural and religious harmony for the
whole world!
How has the TPI project impacted environmental
awareness and peace initiatives in Malaysia?
In small and many ways. We inspired the Malaysian
Nature Society, the oldest environment group in Malaysia
to celebrate its 50th anniversary in Taiping and reminded
an Asia workshop on “Peace Journalism” together with
the Asia-Pacific’s Mass Communication and Information
Center (AMIC) in Singapore.
We had an international 3 weeks workshop with young
activists on “Creating a better world”. We hosted the
founding of the Malaysian Interfaith Network and more
recently “Partners for Peace” together with Service Civil
International (SCI) and others.
The town of Taiping and the initiative has been a really
meaningful and practical platform in small but special
ways.
In order to build a peaceful society what do you
deem as the most crucial actions to take and what
are the obstacles that we must overcome in order to
accomplish this?
The greatest challenge and opportunity is for “people
power” to ensure a peaceful, just and sustainable world.
The most important thing to realize is that the world is
about “Power” and so concerned citizens everywhere must
be empowered and empowering. I often suggest the “Power
of Five” as one platform :
every act, every person can make the difference through
then little actions multiplying into what is called ‘the
tipping point”.
and networks with like minded groups to build “glocal”
(meaning both “global” and “local”) movements.
provides instant information on nearly every issue. We
have to utilize this access. “Net activism” is becoming a
powerful tool for civic organizing.
the United Nations and basic universal values like
“The Golden Rule “ – “treat others like you like to be
treated” - can be harnessed. We don’t have to create new
frameworks. Start with many we have already and you
join hundreds and thousands of people already engaged.
are amazing stories. They are easily forgotten. These
must be recorded, shared and be an inspiration. For
those who tell us something cannot be done, we can tell
them “others have already done it.”
We live in a world dominated by violence, manipulation
and waste. We must tell the world about these three evils
and not be afraid to expose those responsible.
We must promote the “good” agenda, building a world
of harmony, of stewardship and trusteeship, and of
accountability also to the future.
What are your thoughts on EIU and your expectations
for APCEIU in building a peaceful society?
APCEIU is already doing amazing and inspiring work
promoting Education for International Understanding
(EIU) as a natural part of every schooling system. A few
thoughts for the future:
“Street of Harmony” in Penang as learning models and
develop an international workshop regularly on this.
greatest peace advocates of all times, Mahatma Gandhi.
He called them the “Sins against Humanity”. He had
▶ Politics without Principles
▶ Wealth without Work
▶ Enjoyment without Conscience
▶ Knowledge without Character
▶ Business without Morality
▶ Science without Humanity
▶ Religion without Compassion
▶ Rights without Responsibilities
▶ Power without Accountability
▶ Development without Sustainability
▶ Laws without Justice
The world is in a major ethical crisis on all the eleven
areas I mention above. The current violence in the world,
the bigotry and racism that is resurging in many places
makes it even more urgent that good people all over the
world must join hands in furthering the culture of peace
and education for international understanding.
A
nwar Fazal is a local and global public interest activist. He is a recipient of
the Right Livelihood Award, popularly called the “Alternative Nobel Prize”.
He has also received a Gandhi-King-Ikeda Peace Award and the United
Nations Environment Programme “Global 500” honor. He is currently the Director of
the Right Livelihood College, based at the Centre of Policy Research and International
Studies (CenPRIS) at the Universiti Sains Malaysia. The College links academic
institutions and public interest activists toward a sustainable future based on peace
and justice (see www.usm.my/rlc) and ( www.rightlivelihood.org ).

commute between Dili, Timor Leste where I
am raising a family, and Seoul, South Korea,
where I work. The travel between these two
in terms of experience with colonialism and post-
war recovery under the United Nations, but diverge
allowed me to learn many things. Travel commute
between the energy “rich” country of Timor Leste,
and the natural resource “poor” country of Korea,
has enabled me with plural visions, allowing me to
see things which I would not have seen if I sat still in
Dili. I am using “rich” and “poor” here paradoxically
to re-define our definitions of what constitutes
“poverty” and “wealth.” What can these two
countries and their peoples learn from each other?
How much?
Timor Leste is an oil-rich country whose
government expenditure is funded mainly by
income from offshore petroleum production.
Timor Leste’s Petroleum Fund held $6.9 billion
in offshore investments at the end of 2010, helped
by current high oil prices, and is projected to
rise above $14 billion by 2015. According to the
National Development Fund proposed by the
prime minister and the current government, for
Education and the Human Development Fund
alone, “In 2011, the budget of the fund is $25
million. Over the first five years of its operation,
the Fund will rise to around $175 million.” But
according to analysts observing the process in
Timor Leste, of the 21 measurable Millennium
Development Goals, including education, about
half are unlikely to be met by the target of 2015. In
spite of the amount of money circulating in Dili,
the distribution is very unequal.
Timor Leste can provide an excellent case
study for students of “international development”
asking the following questions: what happens
when international organizations are not made
accountable? What happens when governments
design plans that they may fail to implement
and make promises that they may fail to deliver?
How do poor women, youth, and children who
are often marginalized in these processes, make
international organizations, governments, and
their political leaders accountable for waste
and decadence? When both international
organizations and government are busy
pointing the finger at each other for equally
“wasting” resources, how can rural villagers
and other disadvantaged, marginalized groups
impoverished by “disaster capitalism” grab
governance into their own hands?
Korea, in contrast to Timor, has no oil
resources and started out as a very poor country
after Japanese colonization and the Korean
War in 1950, but through the prioritization
of education, compulsory savings, economic
development (not dependent on natural
resources), and gradually strengthening anti-
corruption mechanisms, has become a fairly
prosperous society with excellent universities,
quality primary education, and has become
a cutting-edge leader in the knowledge-
economies of science and technology, economic
development theories, and global governance.
Korea has no shortage of stories about frugality,
stories which I learned while living and working
in Korea for the past two years, and which I like
to relay to my Timorese colleagues, to provide
“alternative examples” to public officials on
“compulsory savings.”
Legend has it that …
My favorite one is a story retold to me by one of
my Seoul National University colleagues: “One
day, a foreigner wanted to see a former Korean
president. While waiting outside the president’s
office, that person could see from the window
that the president was fanning himself without
his shirt on. When it was time for the visitor
to go in, the president had put on his shirt and
EIU That I Am Thinking Of
BETWEEN DILI AND SEOUL:
THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION, CULTURAL
IDENTITY, AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
NOT BASED ON DOMINATION
By Jacqueline Aquino Siapno
(Associate Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University)
jasiapno@snu.ac.kr
1
2
1.Timorese girl dancing Simu Bainaka
2. Children dancing Likurai in Manutasi,
Ainaro, Timor Leste. June 2011
©ChrisPalethorpe
©FernandoLasamadeAraujo
Between Timor, Southeast
Asia, and East Asia, we
have much to learn from
each other in terms of
working together on
“regional governance” and
cultural exchanges.

turned on the air-conditioner. The story goes that
he would turn on the air-conditioner for foreign
visitors, and then once they had left, turn it off
and use a fan and take-off his shirt instead, to
save electricity.”
Another story takes place during that period.
“Korea didn’t have anything to export. They
didn’t have oil or coffee. So the leaders obliged
their people to cut off their hair and make human
experiences with the outside world after the war.”
And still another one which also took place
during the same period. “Korea was very poor
and wanted to learn about shipbuilding, but
they didn’t have the funds to study, and no one
wanted to teach them for free. So Koreans went
to Japan and stood outside the gate of their
shipbuilding yards. From outside the exclusive
gates, they drew and observed the processes and
learned how to build ships. Today, Korea is one
of the largest exporters of high-tech ships.”
Whether or not these stories are true, they
have strong resonance in the East Timor context
where educational values and stories like this
make a huge difference in the choices we make
about paths to development.
Gaping Plans
While the Timor Leste National Development
Plan claims to make education a national priority,
the action, implementation, and allocation of
resources on the ground may become a different
reality. I believe there are huge gaps between the
ideals as articulated in the plan and the politics
of everyday life for children, youth, and women
trying to have access to better education in Timor
Leste.
In this era of knowledge economy, it is not
about who has the most oil and money who
prospers, nor who speaks the best English
and can manufacture the best proposals ala
global governance discourses, but who is
able to convert petroleum wealth and natural
resources into human and social capital and
has a deep understanding and appreciation of
the importance of ethnographic and historical
studies of local knowledge, cultural identities,
and indigenous belief systems and traditions.
What to Emphasize
Our pedagogies and curriculum must emphasize
more compassionate, astute, innovative local
knowledge-economists who understand
the importance of local cultural traditions,
indigenous belief systems and practices, the
significance of local languages, and how to
nurture them to engender a just, equal, peaceful,
and sustainable society which is able to choose
a path of socio-economic development that
respects the ecological integrity of our forests,
rivers, and natural environment.
At the same time, it should live harmoniously
with other cultures, reconciling Timorese
tradition with modernity, synthesizing
indigenous cultural identity with innovations
in the global arena. Timor Leste can learn
from Korea about how they integrated strong
traditional values and cultural identity with
modernity.
What to Learn
Now is the time to learn carefully from countries
that are rich with natural resources but wasted
their opportunities and continue to have huge
socio-economic inequalities, high illiteracy
rates and unemployment, criminally neglecting
education and the rural countryside; and
countries that had little or no natural resources
and yet struggled to become rich by investing on
education – not only on paper, but in everyday
practice.
It is one thing to have a “grand master plan,” but
another thing to engender a sense of ownership
of the whole process by rural villagers, youth,
children, and women who will experience it as
inclusive and participatory, instead of top-down.
What to learn from Timor Leste?
Korean students can learn about the strength
and resilience of indigenous belief systems and
practices (uma lulik), in spite of the experiences
of external intervention. Particularly in the rural
areas, sacred space and indigenous belief systems
and local knowledge continue to be powerful
and resilient, but also a telling reminder of how
ineffectual, how little impact global governance
has had on the local population.
For example, the most cutting-edge in-depth
ethnographic studies I have seen in Timor Leste
are those that demonstrate that indigenous
traditions and new global governance discourses
on democratization and gender empowerment
are complementary, if not long-existing in local
knowledge’s and traditions, instead of “clashing”
with modernity.
Plural Societal Lessons
The world can also learn from Timor Leste
and Southeast Asia more generally about
plural societies, cultural diversity, and how-to
practices “exercises in tolerance-building” and
live harmoniously in multicultural societies,
and think more critically about the dangers of
narrow-minded nationalism that constructs
Studying Southeast Asian cultural identities
and histories would engender more mutual
respect towards Southeast Asia, instead of
primarily seeing certain Southeast Asian
countries as a source of “labor made cheap.”
Those who study Vietnamese, Cambodian,
Indonesian, Thai, Philippine, and East Timorese
histories, for example, would learn that Southeast
Asian gender systems have always allowed very
strong and powerful spaces and roles for women,
with numerous examples of female power since
the 11th century.
Educating themselves about Southeast Asian
histories and cultures would help rural East
Asian males and husbands to respect the bilateral
egalitarian family relations of their spouses from
Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines, for
example, and would nurture and support hybrid
East Asian-Southeast Asian children to feel
pride in having two cultures, instead of having to
tolerate racism and being made to feel a sense of
inferiority.
Between Timor, Southeast Asia, and East Asia,
we have much to learn from each other in terms
of working together on “regional governance” and
cultural exchanges. I hope that this small essay
engenders future dialogue, correspondence, and
educational, cultural exchanges between us.
1 2
3
1. Fatululik, Suai
2. Fernando Lasama de Araujo,
President of Parliament and Interim
President, and Presidential Candidate
for 2012 with traditional elders in
Ainaro
3.Timorese traditional dance
©JoySiapno
©VictorTavares
©JoySiapno
EIU That I Am Thinking Of

By Noel Canales
(Principal, Mabini National High School)
canales_noelweli@yahoo.com
Letter
Dear APCEIU,
D
o you know which one is more environmentally friendly: wooden
chopsticks or the plastic one?” enthusiastically asked Reona, a high
school student from Japan.
“The plastic one because you can clean it afterwards and reuse it,” answered
Mykel, a Filipino student. Looking surprised, a Korean student replied, “No, the
plastic chopstick is non-biodegradable which is bad for the environment, so it is the
wooden chopstick.”
The provocative question posed by a 17-year old student acquired contrasting
responses from the participants. This was one of the scenes from the recently
concluded Youth and Educators Summit for Education for Sustainable Development
(YES 4 ESD).
This is the second international youth summit held at St. Benedict House of Peace
located in Calapan City, the capital of Oriental Mindoro, Philippines. Launched in
2010, the event was attended by students and educators from Japan, South Korea
and the Philippines. This initiative aims to serve as a platform for dialogues among
TRANSCENDING BARRIERS
FORGING FRIENDSHIPS
Special Report
By Ma. Johanna C. Encabo
(Former Junior Programme Specialist, APCEIU)
johannaencabo@yahoo.com
Delegates visiting the Calapan City Hall
SPREADING ITS MISSION
TO SHARE ITS VISION
Let me first congratulate the excellent members of the APCEIU’s
Education and Training Team headed by its ever kind chief, Ms. Eom
Jeongmin, for accomplishing an outstanding feat by producing a
Principals on Education for Diversity (APLASP) held on October
4~13, 2010, at Seoul Women’s Plaza, Seoul, South Korea.
I was so thankful from the bottom of my heart for being given
a beautiful copy of the printed report. It was the first time in my
professional career that a report of the entire training, seminar and
workshop was produced in such a comprehensive and informative
manner. More so, all the participants were provided a copy. It only
speaks of how greatly prepared, resourcefully capable, and deeply
desirous the APCEIU organization is in its efforts to make its vision
and mission spread all over the UNESCO member-countries in the
with burning desire to spread this noble endeavor to all the remotest
corners of the region and to make a great number of people aware of
the principles of international understanding, cultural diversity and
sustainable development, among others.
Back at my station after the APLASP, I did my share of local
implementation of what I had learned from the workshop. To
mention a few, I linked with other participants, Ms. Zarah Fajardini
of Indonesia and Tuan Bui Anh of Vietnam, for the snail-letter writing
exchange program which was introduced during the workshop. We
have had a few letter exchanges already between our students this
school resumes classes this June. Hopefully, I can also have this letter
exchange program with Ms. Kim Hae-sun’s school in South Korea.
In one of the school’s faculty conferences, I presented to my fellow
teachers the principle of education for international understanding
(EIU) emphasized in the UNESCO-supported educational
framework, “Learning to Live Together” (LTLT). Just recently,
during this summer’s pre-school year planning, the whole year’s plan
of activities was laid down with the APCEIU program as our guide
for implementation. I want to give thanks for the APCEIU internet
website for giving the school the chance to surf and read additional
valuable instructional and learning print materials.
Finally, necessary policies were established in school to support the
local implementation of Education for International Understanding
(EIU) as agreed in the action plan with Leo James Pereira of
Bangladesh and Parviz Valadkhan of Iran, i.e. policy that allows
Muslim teachers and students to leave school early in the morning
classes of every Friday for their religious prayers. Additionally, policy
was made on resolving issues that center on boy-girl conflict and
ethnic biases inside the campus.
Let me take this opportunity to ask permission from APCEIU
and its Publication and Information Team led by Mr. Kim Kwang-
hyun to get an electronic copy of its training modules, newsletters,
publications, and SangSaeng magazines from its website. With your
inestimable permission, the school will have more substantial and
meaningful local implementation since those print materials contain
almost everything about education for EIU and other UNESCO
themes. Rest assured, the school will strictly observe the laws on
patent and intellectual property rights (IPR) in the reproduction for
its local use.
Personally, I have read many of those materials on the internet,
especially the SangSaeng magazines, which I admire so much for its
excellence in substance and presentation. I realized then that, with
your approval, it can be excellent material for my students to read in
order to appreciate the various UNESCO themes that APCEIU has
been working hard on for more than a decade and to share with the
Lastly, I would like to express once again how grateful I am
that APCEIU chose me as one of your participants in the 1st Asia-
Pacific Leadership Academy for School Principals on Education
for Diversity. It was a great turn-around in my life, both personal
and professional, and I will always treasure that once in a lifetime
opportunity.
I will make this present a link to become an instrument of peace
and understanding to my fellow local residents in the southern part
of the Philippines. No wonder your teams and the entire APCEIU
organization are so great and have been doing a profound service to
the citizens of the world. I pray for your good health and sound mind
so you can continue to give greater service to all peoples around the
globe beyond their cultural, religious, ethnic, and racial origins in the
name of APCEIU.
Cheers . . . You are the Best!
Kindest regards,
©RexSanDiego
It is through exchange and
dialogue among cultures
that ignorance, mistrust,
and tension will transform
into respect, compassion,
and tolerance thus leading
us into a peaceful and non-
violent society.

No_31-1

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