Meeting with the 23rd APCC Delegation

Today on August 7th, 2011, I held the meeting for the 23rd APCC delegation. When the JAs came back from the Convention, I required them to write an essay on their experiences or make a tri-fold displaying photos. Some answers that they had to include:

Ansley and Ismail came to present their projects. Unfortunately, Yoshi, Julia, Modeline, and Clay was not able make the meeting, but I am hoping to receive Modeline and Clay's essays shortly. Hopefully, I am able to continue this practice for future delegations, because it is very important to keep in touch and understand what the program is; it's what keeps our Bridge Club together. I would like to share with everyone our meeting agenda:

APCC Meeting: August 7, 2011

-Welcome back and becoming a Bridge Club Member of Atlanta!

A Bridge Club Member requires that you:

• -Are committed in keeping in touch with people with your delegation and the friends that you made overseas
• -Are involved in Bridge Club activities and events that are set up

Why?

• -Firstly, it’s an honor for Atlanta to be only one of the 3 cities in the United States that are involved with the APCC with Junior Ambassadors going to Japan every summer. The other cities that are involved are Oakland, California and Honolulu, Hawaii. 
• -There are more opportunities for the Junior Ambassadors once they come back since they can apply to be Peace Ambassadors. In the future, if they are interested in foreign relations or international service, they’ll already have experience. 
• -This is a good program for counting hours for community service projects and volunteering for clubs such as Beta Club or National Honor Society. 

A concept that I’d like all the parents and Junior Ambassadors to know is what program they took part of:

What is the Asian-Pacific Children’s Convention (APCC)?

The Japan American Society of Georgia (JASG) is under the Asian-Pacific Children’s Convention; that’s why you saw the blog that Julia wrote under the JASG website.

The APCC is an international awareness program that promotes cultural learning and encourages students to volunteer as an ambassador to contribute to their community. That way, they can become “Global Citizens” and desire peace and co-existence in their futures.

-What I learned for my role: Peace Ambassador:

• -Peace Ambassadors are Junior Ambassadors that return to Japan when they are at least 16.
• -Our job is to improve, maintain, and give ideas to make our Bridge Clubs better. In Atlanta’s case, I am re-establishing our Bridge Club, due to the lack of organization passed from recent years.

-Purpose of this Meeting:

• -A reflection for the Junior Ambassadors as well as some feedback for the overall program
• -Inform parents what their commitment is for their children now that they are official BC members
• -To inform everyone about the opportunities that your child can have if you continue on being involved

I’m hoping to implement that there will always be a private meeting with just the delegation that came back, so that we can not only hear the reflections from the JAs, but also inform the parents about the program.

-Reflections for the JAs:

• -Ismail did his presentation and then, Ansley did hers.
• 

Ismail talked about how much he loved eating eel and the places his host family took him.

               Ansley really liked playing soccer and meeting new people from the camps. 

Great job at giving the presentations and I’m glad you guys had a terrific experience!

-Here’s what I’ve done: Final Updates

• -I created a Facebook Group, for all of you who do have Facebook, please add me as a friend and I will add you in the group.
• -Blog Posts that you can see are on www.bcio.org under NEW REPORTS. That will be information that I have posted up from meetings, activities, etc.
• -I will have a meeting with Julia and Yoshi, once Julia gets back from Japan to discuss upcoming meeting dates (for schedules) and activities.
• -Our next project will be JapanFest, which is held in September. I’ll email you about the information if you’d like to volunteer and participate in this event.
• -The next meeting will be in the fall and will include people from past delegations, so please KEEP IN TOUCH. I can’t stress that enough!
• This was everyone that attended the meeting. I would like to thank the Peachtree City Library for their amazing facility and my parents (very left) for their support. 

From this meeting, I have learned a lot from the JAs and it was nice to have their feedback for the program. We talked about improving the food at Global Arena, making the exchange camp more organized, so the JAs would know what to do, and working on the language barrier since there was some trouble communicating within the camps. 
Everything is taken one step at a time and this meeting has proven that we can accomplish this great feat in re-establishing our BC. 

Article by: Stephanie Tan (BC President)