Teach Me To Dance Again
Ms. Aki Kawamura, a staff member of a professional basketball team in Japan, cannot forget the words she heard from a teen who survived the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeastern part of the country on March 11.
"Teach me to dance again," the girl at Okawa Junior High School asked Kawamura, 28, when she visited Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, with the team's cheerleaders. Many children in this area have been scarred by the worst natural disaster in post-World War II Japan.
Roughly 70 percent of the students at Okawa elementary school are missing or dead due to the tsunami. Of the 38 students at Okawa Junior High, 11 lost family members they lived with, including little brothers or sisters.
One student who used to have two siblings, said, "I'm an only child now." The junior high school had expected 21 first-year students to enroll this April, but only four have enrolled. Under these circumstances, a gym teacher at the school asked Kawamura if she could help him "give the students the will to live," and the team decided to send cheerleaders every week to teach dance during gym class.
From Asahi.com
Solidarity With Japan
In this context, IDSF urges all visitors to worlddancesport.org to express their solidarity with the people affected by earthquake, tsunami and nuclear fall-out in Japan, and to donate to the Japanese Red Cross Society (here) relief efforts.
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