Bangkok--December 15--Visa International
More than 5,000 Junior High School Students from across Japan recently entered the Visa Olympic Junior Press Club essay competition to win one of 42 trips to the Nagano Olympic Games.
But these trips are not just for fun - they are working holidays. Each of the winners will spend their five-day stay at the Games investigating, writing and filing stories which will be published in their local newspapers, distributed by Kyodo News Service. They will also find an international audience by appearing on Visa's web site (www.visa.com/cgi-bin/vee/ev/olympics/sponsors/press.html) and the Nagano Organizing Committee's web site (www.nagano.olympic.org/fun/fun_j.html).
The competition’s theme was "What I look forward to at the Nagano Olympics," and junior high school students were selected by local newspapers in 42 of Japan's prefectures, from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa at Japan's southernmost point. They stressed how the Olympics encourages world unity and encourages youngsters to accept the importance of competition at all levels.
"I hope that the Nagano Olympics will strengthen friendships between the peoples of the world and enable people to learn good things about Japan," said Tsugumi Ochi, a First Year student at Narita Junior High School, Chiba Prefecture, in his winning essay. "Above all, I would like people from countries upon which Japan inflicted terrible wrongs in the past, such as Korea and China, to learn more about Japan, so that peoples from Japan and those countries can forge closer ties."
The Atlanta Games had a strong impact on Yuki Ezaki, a Second Year student at Yokohama Futaba Junior High School, who wrote: "I found that my own values changed considerably after watching the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympics. Whereas I used to think that the Olympics were all about winning medals, I then understood that this was a magnificent event that, through the medium of sports, was capable of uniting the world. I also realized that we must not forget those people who were unable to participate in the Games because of war or civil strife, and felt sure that these athletes were with us in spirit during the Olympics."
The winning essays of all 42 of the Visa Olympic Junior Press Club members are featured in Japanese on Visa's Japan web site at www.visa.co.jp/olympic/junior.htm and in English on www.visa.com/cgi-bin/vee/ev/olympics/sponsors/press.html
During the Games in Nagano, six teams of seven student journalists, supervised by professional journalists, will follow a full schedule, conducting interviews, going on field trips, attending competitions, meeting real professional reporters, gathering information and researching topics in order to write their newspaper articles.
By helping to develop journalists of the future, the Visa Olympic Junior Press Club supports the Nagano Olympic theme, to encourage youth to follow their dreams.
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