It was really a great moment when we heard the announcement of the project
award 2004 for 3 projects among short-listed 5. Participants from EU &
ASEAN countries suddenly got quiet when they saw a jury, Mr. Donath from
Germany, made his way toward the front with a microphone in his hand, waiting
for the very moment to come.
“Well, it was really hard for juries to choose 3 among 5 projects because
every project is well organized and quite sufficient. Don’t beat me if
your project isn’t announced. Beat the prizewinners. Well, you know, there’s
no ranking as this is not the Olympics, nor the Paralympics, so I don’t
know which one would be the first to be announced. But well, the first
one, our favorite one is… peace... the Peace Project!”
We jumped up for joy in the conference room while other participants gave their applause with deep sigh and admiration. Mr. Nakajima from Japan raised both hands with full smile on his face and suddenly collapsed on the table, feeling his heart still beating. After the announcement, every teacher of our project got together to share the wonderful moment with chats and taking photographs. Other than our project, “Students’ Magazine” organized by Ms.Yeni Artanti from Indonesia, and “iContrast@Vhome” by Ms.Britta from Singapore also got the award, and had an interview for a press of the local newspaper.
There had been some straggle before the project presentation. Because of
the misunderstanding about the time for presentation, Mr. Nakajima found
it really hard to cut the contents of it to squeeze it into the 15 minutes,
which had already been prepared within 25 minutes. He was also sure of
the tight schedule, just a couple of hours for 5 presentations, so he had
no choice but to make it shorter. However, teachers of our project group
helped him as to negotiate organizers of the conference to get more 10
minutes as they promised. In the end, every coordinator got 25 minutes
for their presentation, and Mr. Nakajima was really encouraged not only
to have the time for it, but to confirm our friendship which had been in
our hearts through the year long project.
If it had not been for the help, joy for the award wouldn’t have been
so great. This award is, of course, a symbol of our mutual friendship,
the proof of our success, and the promise to organize the next phase of
our Peace Project. Teachers hope to meet students on line and share wonderful
moment with each other.
