Sophia Magazine vol.8 / WINTER 2018

4/36

UN General Assembly President Stresses Importance of Woman in Conict Resolution#03Asia Jesuit University Students Assist Community Recovery in Iwate#04The annual AJCU-AP (Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities – Asia Pacic) Service Learning Pro-gram was this year held in Japan and hosted by Sophia. Taking the theme of “Post-disaster Community Recovery,” the event was attended by 28 students and nine academic staff from eight uni-versities of Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and East Timor, as well as Sophia. The program included a week-long stay in Kamaishi, Iwate Pre-fecture, a city devastated by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and accompanying tsunami. There, in addition to carrying out volunteer ac-tivities, participants mixed with locals and learned about the post-disaster re-covery and the revival of the local com-munity.Volunteer services undertaken in Ka-maishi included running a festival at a local kindergarten, song and dance performances at a senior-care facility, mowing grass on a farm, and clean-ing a factory. The group also visited Unosumaicho and Otsuchi, two other towns also severely damaged by the tsunami, where they listened to a ded-icated guide who lived through the ca-tastrophe as they considered the chal-lenges inherent in disaster prevention and evacuation. Participants approached the pro-gram in earnest, debrieng togeth-er each day and sharing their impres-sions with one another. They listened to the stories of survivors and observed the importance of being grateful to be alive, and that of religious faith. Some students even found that their world-view had been changed. As one Indo-nesian student who joined the program reects, “I learned to think of others be-fore myself, and discovered the spirit of volunteering. I will put it into practice in the future, and I hope to contribute to disaster recovery in my own country.”María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, elected President of the United Na-tions General Assembly in June 2018, visited Sophia University on August 31. She delivered a speech on the subject, “How to strengthen the United Nations - women, peace and security” to as-sembled students and staff.In her lecture, Espinosa pre-sented data illustrating her point that, “The involvement and ac-tive participation of women, who are half the population, is critical for the success of peace negoti-ations and peacebuilding.” She noted, however, just two percent of conict mediators are women, and stressed that, when it comes to the participation of women in peacemak-ing, there are plenty of trials and chal-lenges yet to overcome, but as Presi-dent of the UN General Assembly she would do her utmost to enable the ac-tive participation of women in peace negotiations and sustainable peace-building. Explaining that this goal will require the cooperation of a broad range of institutions and individuals, from UN Member States to academics and NGOs, she expressed her hope of engaging more with global universities like Sophia. President Espinosa previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Min-ister of National Defense of Ecuador, as well as Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations. On June 5, 2018, the UN General Assem-bly elected her as the fourth female President and the rst Latin American woman to serve in this role.Campus news4