Individual Donor

A First Step on the Road to “World Citizens” By Mr. Brent de Chene

(Mr. De Chene is a Minsai Center donor. His support helped in the construction of the 16th school built through Minsai’s Laos School Construction Project. The school was completed in August 2006. Mr. De Chene participated in the completion ceremony for the school. The Minsai Center asked him to write an article about his thoughts on the significance of Laos school construction and primary education.)

In recent years, assistance to developing countries provided not by governmental agencies, but by non-governmental organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has attracted a good deal of attention. The debate on what kinds of assistance are most effective is far from over, but it is fair to say that two of the fields in which aid is indispensable are (a) infectious disease and public health, a major focus of the Gates Foundation, and (b) elementary education, on which the Minsai Center and a wide variety of other organizations concentrate their efforts. Below, I would like to think about the importance of elementary education. Like other Minsai donors, my personal contacts with Lao and Thai people through the Minsai Center have been extremely meaningful, and I hope to deepen and extend those contacts in the future. My comments here, however, will be about elementary education in the abstract rather than about personal experience.

In areas like Japan and Western Europe, a literacy rate approaching 100 percent is nowadays so completely taken for granted that we tend to forget that even in such areas mass literacy is historically a recent phenomenon, dating back no further than about the 1870s. But literacy, still something of a "luxury item" at the end of the 19th century, is in the world of the early 21st century a virtual necessity for meaningful participation in society, local or global. The advantages that are typically cited for expanded literacy include the ability to protect oneself against fraud and the decline in infant mortality that accompanies the ability to read written material on hygiene and nutrition. Laos, whose literacy rate of 68.7% places it 138th out of 178 countries surveyed by the United Nations in 2005, can certainly expect to see such benefits from the spread of literacy, and there will without question be economic benefits as well. But I believe that literacy has still further advantages. Learning to read puts one in potential contact with the thoughts of people in distant countries and distant centuries and almost inevitably results in an expansion of one's field of vision and understanding. It may be that what the 21st century needs more than anything else are individuals who, rising above ethnic, national, and religious divisions, are able to consider the entire human race their "people". It goes without saying that literacy alone cannot produce such world citizens, but it may not be too much to say that learning to read and write constitutes a first step on the road to that ideal. For me, this is one of the meanings that the work of the Minsai Center has.

Please click here regarding School Construction in　Laos.

(English version prepared from the Japanese original by Mr. Brent de Chene, May 7, 2007.)

Ms. Tamai

I have been donating to students in Thailand since 1990, and the number of students I have supported will reach ten in 2006. Pot, an ex-scholarship student in Thailand whom I supported from 1993 to 1995, requested of the Minsai Center in Thailand that she be allowed to extend her appreciation to her donor (me) who supported her when she was a junior high school student. She got the chance to visit Japan in 2002, through the　 event commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Minsai Center, and I met her then.

Pot continues to work her way through school. She currently works at the fishing agency of the Thai government while attending evening school and studying for the employment examination to become an agricultural teacher at schools near her home town.

Pot said, “No matter how difficult it was, I could work hard, because my donor, who lives far away, always gave hope to me. I have wanted to meet and say thank you to my donor. ” I was so touched by her words that I cried. Pot also said, “I want to provide the same opportunity to my juniors as was provided to me. I think I could learn so many things from her.

Ms. Shimada

I have been donating to the Darunee Scholarship program since 1989. I corresponded with Patcharin, the first girl I supported. Because Patcharin was a studious child and wanted to become a doctor, I supported her for six years until she graduated from high school. When I participated in the Thailand study tour, she traveled for three hours each way to come to see me. At that time she was a university student.

In 2002, I invited Patcharin to Tokyo for the 15th anniversary of the Minsai Center and she stayed a couple of days with my family. When I heard she had become a pediatrician and is now working in the northeastern region of Thailand, I felt as proud as if she were my daughter. I keenly felt the importance of education.

Although I think she’ll probably have some worries and encounter various obstacles as a doctor in her future, I genuinely hope that she becomes a doctor who is kindhearted and can understand human weakness.