Ha ji Me Ma Shi Te (Nice to Meet You) (From Watford Observer)

Ha ji Me Ma Shi Te (Nice to Meet You)

9:50am Thursday 9th February 2012

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Last Wednesday I had a very interesting morning when I had the privilege of meeting a group of councillors from Japan who visited our offices. The councillors were from the City of Fukuoka in Japan and were visiting Europe on a study Tour looking at local democracy. They wanted to visit the Trust to discuss how we involve our tenants in our decision making process. They brought with them an excellent translator to help with the language situation and I even managed to learn a couple of Japanese short phrases.

Dorothy Thornhill, the Elected Mayor of Watford also attended the meeting, however, I was clearly the star of the day as you can see in my photograph - the centre of attention as usual!!

It was very enlightening discussing the differences between our two countries and a quote from one of the councillors who said “In Fukuoka we have housing provided by the local authority, but here you have a housing organisation that is run by the residents and members. That’s something we don’t have – it’s real autonomy. It was worth coming all this way and we learned a lot more than we expected to!”

It is absolutely incredible that we are becoming known across the world, not too long ago I even received an email from Nigeria.

So, wherever you are we will be delighted to hear from you, do keep those emails coming in.

To find out more information about anything happening at the Trust, please contact me on trusty.house@wcht.org.uk or on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/WatfordCommunityHousingTrust.

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