On Saturday March 24, we held “Development Education Material Experience Festival 2018” at the Sacred Heart Global Plaza.  This event is held annually by the Development Education Association and Resource Center (DEAR).  By actually experiencing the teaching materials connected to development education, you can get hints to learn about global issues through participatory learning.
At BE＊hive, we conducted a “refugee workshop” utilizing exhibits.  In the workshop, we stayed close to the refugee’s feelings through quizzes and an exhibition tour.

Furthermore, through the learning about the experiences of refugees living in Japan, we learned about the current state of refugee acceptance in Japan, and the refugee recognition system.  We discussed about what we want to know more about, and we also considered what we can do for them.

Participants included those who knew very little about refugees, those who had met refugees, and those who were engaged in support activities.  As we joined in group work, many questions and many things we wanted to know arose. For example, the definition of “refugee”, differences between refugees and immigrants, conditions for refugees, refugee acceptance in Japan, and etc.

Below are the comments from participants.

・I learned a lot from other participants through participatory learning.（student）

・BE＊hive has interesting exhibitions, I’m glad I could participate.（group staff）

・Refugees seem far away, but I was able to deepen my understanding through these workshops.（teacher）

・While understanding the differences between refugees and immigrants, I would like to use teaching materials well and utilize them in lessons.（teacher）

In addition, we implemented DEAR’s new teaching materials and standard teaching materials: “Development Education Basic Activities”, “World / I / SDGs Thinking from the Smartphone”, “The Table of the Earth”, “If the world were the village of 100 people”.  Approximately 100 people from all over Japan including teachers, NPO / NGO staff, company employees, students, etc participated.  Thank you very much!

（Written by staff member, Yukiko Iwaoka）