The lecturer in the fourth class of the Global Career Lecture Series was Sayori Kobayashi, who has the experience of being dispatched overseas with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF is an international non-governmental organization aimed at humanitarian and medical aid. It supports those who cannot receive health and medical services of various problems such as conflict, disaster or poverty.
Dr. Kobayashi talked about why she started working for MSF, with a focus on her early life.
When she was fifteen years old, Dr. Kobayashi went to a Christian school. Meanwhile, she was thinking that she wanted to help others, and one day she suddenly got an inspiration on the train: “I want to work at refugee camps as a doctor!” The students listened to that story about a girl who was their own age and were very drawn in by it.
Afterward, she was dispatched to several countries, and worked as a doctor there. In the lecture she elaborated on her experience in Pakistan and South Sudan, both of which were in a state of civil war at the time. Since there was a civil war in Pakistan, she had to protect her own life while saving others. All the staff there had security meetings every day. When gunfire occurred near their residences, they could not go out also couldn’t even look out of the window because they could become targets.
Instead of focusing on the risks she said that her life was fulfilling. She sent a powerful message, “I won’t say that you should go to conflict areas like me, but I definitely want you to see the world in different ways. As we live in Japan, we often forget about other countries and areas. But I want you to think about them and know there is work like this out there. I hope you will find what you really want to do in your life, now, during high school, just like I did.”
She advised the students on their course after graduation, “In Japan, college students tend to spend a lot of time playing or working part-time. Instead, you should think about what you want to do, and take advantage of being in college to achieve your goals.” “Now we can get information so easily that we think we can understand things just by reading websites or books. I never really understood so many things until I lived there. Make sure you see and feel for yourself and really learn.”
She, with soft demeanor, very simply related the way she had walked and the world she had lived in, which inspired a deep sense of hope in the students.
