Stories of Resilience: Paul Fujishige

Join us for an afternoon of storytelling with Edmonton Japanese Community Association’s (EJCA) Paul Fujishige on November 18th at 1:00PM

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Paul Fujishige was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba as a 3rd Generation (Sansei) Japanese Canadian. He moved to Alberta since 1980 and has lived in Edmonton since 1991. Paul has shared 38 generous years to his career in Government, Non-Profit and Education Sectors, primarily in the Disability Services field. He is a Board Member in his local United Church and a social committee member of Matsu no kai Senior’s Club. Furthermore, the internment of his family during the Second World War helped shape and solidify his focus on advocacy. Currently, Paul is the President of the Edmonton Japanese Community Association (EJCA). He became president since 2020 and have been involved with EJCA since his retirement.

2023 marks an important year for us at the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights, as well as for all humankind. Seventy five years ago, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came into force as the first international framework for human rights at the United Nations’ following the atrocities of the second world war.

Coming into the 75th Anniversary, we see there are many struggles that continue to confront our local and global communities. While we have international human rights law and foundations to guide us, we have a long way to go to actualize these rights and bring peace to our communities and world. The rates of hate and intolerance are growing, poverty is deepening, and Canadians are only now beginning to reckon with our deep history of genocide.

One of our goals this next year is to create a learning environment with the older generation of human rights defenders who have much wisdom and capacity to share with the younger generations, and vice versa, to encourage intergenerational learning. Thanks to the support of the New Horizons for Seniors Federal Grant and Contributions Program, we have the capacity to facilitate a series of online learning sessions with seniors so we can learn from them and strengthen the capacity for our collective work on human rights across generations.