On August 24, UFERSA and other 17 universities in the Network of Northeastern Federal Universities (RENE) will sign an academic partnership with Soka University, Japan. The signing ceremony will take place at the Great Hall of the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE), campus Dois Irmãos in Recife, at 8 a.m.
The partnership is supposed to enable the universities network to promote social technology, education, and sustainability actions through the cooperation between Japanese and Brazilian universities. Subsequently, the representatives of all undersigned universities will attend the Northeastern Universities and Soka University International Conference on Higher Education for the Well-being of Manking.
The idea to sign the partnership first came up when the Brazilian university presidents visited Soka Institute in Manaus, state of Amazonas. The institute is run according to humanistic principles by Daisaku Ikeda, a pacifist, philosopher, author, poet, founding president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), and president of Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist organization in Japan. In the light of the challenges faced by higher education in Brazil, the presidents of Northeastern universities are willing to interchange social technology, scientific and popular knowledge, and promote mobility of students and professors.
In a note published in UFRPE offical site, Silvana Vicente, representative of Soka Gakkai International, says the partnership is supposed to succeed because it is based on humanistic education, it is politically and ideologically unbiased, and it is inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). “It is a sign of hope for the students”, she says.