On the afternoon of September 30, 2004, Mr. Terakawa and Mr. Ikeda visited the UNESCO-IHE (Institute for Water Education) Office in Delft, the Netherlands. Established in 2002 as a Category 1 Centre of UNESCO, it has the functional areas on water issues including "Education, Training and Research" and "Partnership Building and Networking" among others, and has established strong project-based partnerships/ networks with the other international, regional and national centres or institutes of the world. Also its alumni exceed over 12,000 in 120 countries.http://www.unesco-ihe.org

We were warmly welcomed by Prof. Richard Meganck, Director of UNESCO-IHE and had a one-hour meeting, followed by looking at the facilities such as seminar rooms and laboratories. He expressed his strong willingness to collaborate with a new UNESCO Center in Tsukuba in the future, and kindly proposed us to introduce the preparatory activities to set up the Centre on the next UNESO-IHE newsletter, which is now widely disseminated all over the world.