Tamy Yamamoto M.D.

Master student of Community and Global Health

Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo

Participating in the BABA 6 retreat was an incredible experience and it has been the best opportunity I have ever had to share, interact and learn with people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds.

Before going to BABA 6, I had many expectations about this retreat, as I wondered how after a 1-week long retreat we could improve our leadership skills and most importantly, how 19 people from different countries, meeting for the 1st time, were going to be able to build a strong network to work together for the betterment of Asia? After the 1st few days of the retreat, I saw how it could be possible. As our BABA 6 family grew closer together, I was certain that this bond was going to last for long time after the retreat was over.

During the retreat we had many activities, each one with its own purpose. Starting with the ice-breaking activities, lead by the Fantastic 4, which helped us to feel comfortable sharing our thoughts and feeling as a family working together towards a common goal. The presentations by the resource persons, gave us the tools to become better persons and leaders. Being able to learn from their experiences and their advices was an extraordinary opportunity. The activities lead by the Facilitators (Incredible 2), especially the Pecha Kucha Morning, was an enriching experience where we could learn what each of the participants does in their own country and how each of us is already a young leader in his/her own field/area.

I found very interesting one of the last activities we did, which was “Creating a better Me”. After learning from the resource persons about leadership and the characteristics leaders should have, in this activity we had to make introspection and come up with ways to improve ourselves as persons and as future leaders. After it we had to share it with other people, and also ask for their advice on how to improve. Although it could had seem a difficult task, the trust and friendship developed during the retreat, made this activity easy and enlightening; getting good advices which I plan to work on.

Finally, I would like to thank all the people involved in this program, for giving me the opportunity to participate and for making it an inspiring and unforgettable experience. In this retreat, I not only learned about leadership, other cultures and countries, but also about myself. I hope our BABA 6 family can meet again in the near future and that through our friendship and network, we are able to work together to build a better Asia.

Shuichi Ohno, Executive Director of Nippon Foundation spoke on the activities of Nippon Foundation . He also demonstrated the history , financing ,affiliation, budget ,recent programs, success rate of Nippon Foundation, .He talked about the future and future planning of Nippon Foundation The session was very good and enjoyable.. He answered several issues raise by the participants

10:30 Interactive session Technology and Democracy

Dr Anupam Saraph discussed on the election commission of India. He demonstrated his recent election and the election process of India. He also arose some issues which can be reformed for the perfect and transparent election in India. He talked on Privacy and secrecy of election commission. He insisted on Right to Information Act. He answered several issues raise by the participants from his lecture.

13:30 Interactive session: Value Innovation

Johnson Paul was the resourse person of this session. He talked about Innovation criteria’s. Techniques, Planning Process, Six Steps in Decision taking. he showed us a lot of examples and models of Innovation Ideas.

15:30 Walking in the streets of Beijing

Walking in Beijing city in different types of places, such as The Olympic Village and the free market, Software park we can find some thing positive, something negative and also others we don’t know how to make a comment. And the most important thing is to interview the people we met.This session was very enjoyable and fantastic because it was organized by fantastic four. Beijing people are happy people!

20:00 presentation on your achivements walking in the streets

Each group’s presentation is impressive and initiative.,All of the grups tried their best for finding and focusing the positive matters of Beijing. Actually there are very low negative thing in Beijing. Presentation session wasvery enjoyable and also lively.

Personal impressions or opinions

Li Bing Zhong:

Today most of the participants has a deep impression about the Nippon Foundation and identified with it much. And also our mind are experiecing an revolution and began to think about what the Nippon Foundation means to us, to Asia and to the world. Of course the most intersting thing for us today is to travel in Beijing and feel the Beijing culture. In sum, it is an intelligeable, creative and enjoyable day.

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Mohammad Afzal Hossain Akand

Today I was very happy because I knew a lot of thinf about The Nipon Foundation.I have lack of Knowledge on this organization which was met today.The other two session was basically Khowledge sharing based.Today the city strreet walking was the best program for the because I like to know people and also like make friends.Meet the Beijing was a dream by me and this was partially filled today.The last session was also attaractive because everyone demonstrated what he saw in Beijing.

The arrival at the Delhi airport was Ok. But, it took a long time to get our luggage, pass the immigration process and finally transfer to thedomestic terminal. We took approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes. I also had a problem with my ticket and Naomi supported me running from one side to the other to have this problem fixed. When we arrived in Bhubaneswar, Orissa the organization provided taxis to drive us to the hotel where we stayed for a week. I really thank the organization which supports us all the time.

When, we arrived in the hotel, we had a very nice welcome reception and started to received the initial instructions about the next activities of the day. The activities we had in the first day were conducted by Prof. Anupam. These activities were used as ice breaking, but at the same time, they help us to understand the purpose of our retreat in Orissa. The first impression that I had was that we, people living in Asia, need to change our preconceptions and re-thing about how we see Asia. Only in that way we will be able to start project that might re-shape the future of Asia in a better way.

The first activity was “thumb wrestling” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k51jG7u0Tcs). The goal was to achieve 40 points in 1 minute. For those who know the game, usually takes at minimum 10 seconds to get one point. Here, the message was: “don’t try to compete when you can collaborate”. If you just think about getting points to yourself, you will always try to compete and you will never achieve 40 points because the “opponent” will fight to get these points too. However, if you enter in agreement with your “partner” then both can get 40 points, you just let your partner get 40 points and after you can get 40 points too. Just don’t fight, collaborate.

The second activity was again about team work. One of the group members had the knowledge to guide us to a target place, but he/she could not speak or see (the eyes were covered). Then, he/she could do mimics to make us understand where we need to go. After understanding where to go, the group needs to help the member with eyes covered to reach the target place by being his/her eyes. The idea of this activity is that: “we don’t have all the information or abilities to do things alone. We must collaborate so everyone can reach the goal”.

Why those activities were so important? Before arriving in Orissa, we didn’t know what to expect … these activities helped us to understand what we need to do to make a better asia: (a) work together; (b) develop binds that can last long years; (c) be creative to solve “unsolvable” problems; (d) help others and not just ourselves.”

At night we had a wonderful open-air meal. Also, we had our first cultural session where we enjoyed local music and dance. It was really incredible how kids could dance in such an amazing way … they were fabulous !!!

About 9:00 PM people started to live for their rooms, but still the Japanese fellows wasn’t present. I was worried because (Akira and Gustavo) should have arrived by 7 PM after so many delays. So, I stayed in the hotel lobby waiting for them. Together with me, Mary who was the responsible to take care of us, and other two folks waited until about 00:30 AM when they finally arrived. It was a relief to see their faces. After a good session of hugs and laughs they had dinner and we spend the rest of the time talking about their adventure and bad luck.

As a summary of the first day, I can say I enjoyed a lot. It was really a good moment where we met other people and started to understand what the goals of BABA retreat were.