About Me
Hairin is a self-confident and activist 9th grade student at Hiroshima International School in Japan. Her main hobbies are music, art and chess, which show a wide range of ideas and individuality. Her special skills include playing all instruments, guitar, piano, bass, cajon, and harmonica, as well as singing, dancing, and even singing while playing those instruments. She can play all styles of music and has also been featured on her own official Youtube channel, “New in Japan” which has attracted 2,070 fans across Japan and other countries.
In the arts, she creates abstract colorful and multifaceted artwork that is unique to her. In sports, she was active in many areas and has previously placed 9th in the Japan National Swimming Championships. She is able to present unique ideas that are made up of these mental strengths, and further share ideas with her teammates during the group project to present effective and clear solutions. She is half Japanese and half Chinese, born in Beijing, China, moved to Hiroshima, Japan at the age of two, and grew up in Hiroshima. Therefore, she has various knowledge of the cultural background of both countries, and also has international communication skills, speaking three languages, Japanese, Chinese, and English. She makes effective use of the central parts of both countries and focuses on the SDGs issues occurring in each country.
At Hiroshima International School, she is a member of the “Thousand Cranes Club”, a peace club unique to Hiroshima. The club receives folded paper cranes, a symbol of peace, from schools and communities around the world, and also communicates with them through messages and visits, which serve as a catalyst for building peace. In addition to her own International background, she has been actively involved in peace activities, and has grown in time management, organization of ideas, leadership, and understanding of the current international situation. Since she was a child she has focused on the relationship between her countries. Not only these two countries, but the world is full of conflicts between countries for various reasons, which have led to wars and discriminatory thinking among the people of each country. So she thinks from the perspective of the center of both countries, and she would like to create a system that will serve as a catalyst for connecting the ring of world peace in the world, with the aim of the future world situation and a world where different countries can respect each other.
Project Description
HARMONY HUB is an experienced and leading organization made up of students, their parents, and teachers from Hiroshima International School in Japan, aged between 15 and 60, whose goal is to lead countries with different cultures to accept each other in the future in the world situation. We mainly work in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, where we currently see various discrimination and prejudice against foreigners.
In Japan, people from other countries are harassed in various ways, not only in the streets but also in the daily lives of people living in Japan, and across borders in the comments section of social media. And what they show is that people are far away from people with different cultures. In other words, there are countless lack of knowledge and people interacting with each other without understanding each other's positions. For example, in each country, people basically get information by watching the news and newspapers reported in that country. However, the same news may be reported in different directions depending on the country. If I had to say, it's possible that the country itself is designing the reporting to be completely opposite to the truth. As a result, people are unable to understand the wrong information or are swayed by rumors, and are unable to obtain correct wisdom.
Therefore, in order to support this state, we create opportunities to provide people with correct information and realize a sense of security where people of different cultures can understand each other's positions and interact with each other with confidence in their cultures and countries.
We, HARMONY HUB, are a new organization that has just been formed in this 2024 UNITAR project, but each of our group members is interested in the topic of "cultural prejudice and discrimination," and has had such experiences in the past, and has strong belief that we want to think about what we can do now to definitely solve the problem in the future, so we will do our best this time.
Regarding the initiative that we focused on this time, "Eliminating discrimination and prejudice in Hiroshima," we presented the following solution.
At the international school that we attend, people from various countries gather, and even though they have different cultures, everyone gets along well, and there is no prejudice or discrimination at all. That's why we focused on it. We thought that by providing opportunities to get to know each other like in our school, understanding would deepen, and prejudice and discrimination would decrease. So we will conduct interviews at our school and hear the opinions and claims about "cultural discrimination" from students and teachers. Furthermore, since I myself have a Chinese background, I can communicate honest feelings with my Chinese friends by asking them about their personal opinions and asking them about what they think about Japanese culture. Furthermore, we have a place called “Peace Memorial Park” in Hiroshima, where peace activities, international relations, and demonstration organizations are frequently active, so we also ask them about their experiences. By gathering voices from various communities, we will use social media to create a documentary called "Discrimination and Prejudice in Hiroshima" that compiles them. The documentary will include stories of people who have actually experienced it, as well as the events of our cultural exchange events, and will appeal to viewers to think about cultural discrimination and the current situation. Then, we will disseminate these documents to the world through social media, making them accessible to younger generations, and will have a sustainable long-term impact.