Sendai, Japan — A delegation of officials from Togo who had come to Japan for a UN conference met with UPF-Japan and local Ambassadors for Peace and prayed for victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The Togolese delegation, led by Minister of Environment and Forest Resources H.E. Mr. Andre K.A. Johnson, were participating in the third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, held from March 14 to 18, 2015, in Sendai, a city which was hit especially hard by the Great East Japan Earthquake and resultant tsunami of March 11, 2011.
The UN conference, which was attended by delegations from 186 countries, discussed a framework for disaster risk reduction. During the time of the conference, UPF-Japan and the Tohoku (region) Ambassadors for Peace Association held several meetings with the Togolese.
When the delegates arrived by train at the Sendai Station on March 14, UPF and the Ambassadors for Peace welcomed them by waving Togolese, Japanese and UPF flags. A representative of the UPF volunteers to Togo, Mrs. Yoshiko Nagasawa, presented a bouquet of flowers to H.E. Mr. Johnson. The delegation set off for the venue of the conference soon after the welcoming event.
On the afternoon of March 16, the UPF volunteers to Togo organized a lunch meeting with the delegation, at which they explained their activities in the West African nation, which were noted with deep interest by the visitors.
Following the lunch, UPF brought the visitors to Yuriage Junior School in the city of Natori, one of the areas that was worst hit by the tsunami, where they joined an interfaith prayer organized by the Committee of the International Symposium on Disaster Risk Reduction at a memorial for the earthquake victims.
A clock on the school building had stopped at the time of the disaster, 2:46 p.m., and remains at the same time.
In 2013 and 2014, the Togolese Embassy to Japan, whose chargé d'affaires, Mr. Bodjona Alewabia Delali Aklesso, is an Ambassador for Peace, co-organized concerts in Sendai, together with UPF-Japan and the Tohoku Ambassadors for Peace Association, to raise funds for the region after the earthquake.
The welcoming event for the Togolese delegation at the Sendai Train Station is posted on the official website of the Togolese government. Click here to view the website [French]