Today at school I did some real good. I gave a speech about our Trailwalk to all of the students and teachers at my school, Oigawa High School. Normally I would not consider something like this blog worthy, but this is Japan. What I mean is that we live in a country that in just the last 70 years has both suffered through a devastating war on their home turf (my professor once described the bombings of Japan this way: "Imagine that 9/11 happened everyday for a year.") and ascended to being the world's second largest economy. With the national attitude that these experiences helped to mold comes an unsympathetic, bordering on harsh, view toward charity. When telling one Japanese friend of mine about Oxfam's project to help people in South Africa fight AIDS I was met with the response, "People in South Africa don't need our help!" After my further explaining the situation and Oxfam's purpose, my friend was quite understanding and supportive but I think the intial response is telling. It's not that Japanese, in general, are against the idea of chartiy at its core (I mean, who really is?), it's just that they feel that no matter how bad it is, people should be able to pick themselves up with their own strength. After all, they pulled off a pretty dramatic turn around within the lifetime of many people still alive today. While this can sometimes be a valid argument, in cases such as Darfur it lacks the needed perspective.

That's where my speech comes in.

While I am a teacher, sometimes it feels like the chance to teach kids something that can help them for their whole life seldom comes around. I think that today was one of those chances. As I stood up in front of the whole school and my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) translated my speech, I could see some very confused faces. How are walking 100km and raising money for people in Africa related? Why are you going through the trouble to help these people? All good questions for people whose lexicon does not include such words as fundraising or philanthropy. Judging from the comments I got afterwards, I think that my explaination of our event and Oxfam in general at least got the gears turning upstairs. I hope that through my talk I was able to convey to my students that these people have been put in situations where, despite these people fighting everyday to make it, they need the help of things like Oxfam to just survive. At the very least, I am happy to have introduced the idea of helping others who really need it to over 600 people who maybe had never thought about it in the same way before. Today, I can tell myself, "You are doing good."

P.S. Found the origin of the name Oxfam. Comes from the original name of the group founded in England in 1942, the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief

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