Recommendations
Panel 2: Making Asia Part of Your Life
Objectives:
To provide delegates with a personal account of how Asia has become part of the panelists personal and professional lives.
To develop a kit with changing themes, using different countries as the focus. This kit could include a list of resource people, ideas for activities, stories of peoples lives in the country, traditional recipes, and recommended reading.
To bridge the chasm of ignorance between cultures by maturing out of the stage of denial. Without admitting to a mutual lack of knowledge, one cannot start to solve the problems that have impeded understanding between Asia and the West. By learning more about each other and working together to find a balance between cultural disparities, youth could become ambassadors for their respective ethnicities and nations. Not only will this promote understanding but also mutual admiration and respect between cultures.
To increase government subsidies to facilitate sharing among youth and the acquisition of knowledge through workshops, conferences and internships. This investment in youth will pay dividends by improving society through knowledge sharing.
To increase knowledge of Asia by living there, forming an internet chat, allotting time in the media for international news dealing specifically with youth, and encouraging government to subsidize Asian programming, as part of the re-education of students on Asia.
To integrate Asian life and culture into our lifestyle by interacting through the use of modern technology such as video-conferencing, internet resources, and multi-media.
To learn about cultures in Canada and have hands-on experience, by encouraging the "bringing of cultures" to our schools, through the establishment of clubs, holding cultural events, and/or beginning exchange programs.
To understand Asian countries without false conclusions or assumptions based on ones own values through hands-on experience such as workshops, multicultural activities, travelling, talking to people of other cultures. Hands-on experience will also teach people to deal with cultural differences, while maintaining their individual cultures, and not view these differences as better or worse.
To encourage Asian influences in our Western world, by providing elementary and secondary schools with resource kits that include information in the form of videos, CD ROMs, pictures, books, tapes, and clothing which will enrich the minds of youth and result in a more diverse appreciative future. These kits should be updated on a regular basis and be sent to urban as well as remote and rural communities that are not as exposed to Asian lifestyles.
To recruit a multicultural co-ordinator to help to establish programs that promote diversity in local communities; to encourage communities to host multicultural events (e.g. fashion shows, dinners, performances); and to develop relationships between local and international schools through twinning with schools overseas and developing cultural trips and exchanges.
To travel (money permitting) and to visit local communities.
To spur individual initiatives at a basic level, e.g. rallies, Asia weeks, Asia groups sponsored by delegates to teach people about Asia.
To cease government cuts to education programs and to expand them by adding courses which promote cultural diversity.
To diversify buying habits to include Asian products and know-how in order to correct the problem of one-way patronage in North America-Asian consumerism.
Western powers focus mainly on economics in their relationships with Asian powers while ignoring the importance of all Asian people and culture. We must understand that interest in Asia is not merely a trend and we must not back out of our commitment if political or economic instability prompt a decrease in profit.To promote tourism to Asian countries by making more flights and tourism packages available. The target group would be the general Canadian populace, and the advertising (via television, radio, Internet, etc.) would be sponsored by airlines (e.g. Cathay Pacific).
© 1997 - TG Magazine / The Students Commission
© 1997 le magazine TG / la Commission des Ètudiants