The following report was written by our country representative, Jamiena Shah.
This year’s meeting was made possible by funding from the Centre for Global Partnership and was supported by MOFA and CLAIR Tokyo. The official meeting took place Friday October 21st and Saturday October 22nd at the CLAIR Head Office in Tokyo.
The meeting was followed by a volunteer 2-day excursion to the Tohoku Region. Several JETAAi representatives joined current JET Programme participants of the Tohoku region to volunteer in the ongoing cleanup efforts in Rikuzentakata, where the late Montgomery (Monty) Dickson was stationed as a JET. It was important for JETAAi to find a way to give back in a real way, that wasn’t just money or an item on an agenda, and by going directly to the affected area to aid in the aftermath clean-up.
Aims and Objectives of this year’s conference were:
- Develop strategies and blueprints for a 3 year action plan for building closer ties with Japan and Japan related organizations.
- To serve as a forum for intellectual discussions on the future of grassroots and cultural exchange activities to be spear headed by JETAA chapters globally.
- To showcase examples of projects/efforts completed by country chapters (New Zealand, U.K, South Africa, U.S.A) contributing to the recovery of Japan.
- Develop strategies to increase the visibility of JET and JETAAi across the world.
- Communicate value of JET and JETAA to members, community, Japan and the media.
- Increase our online footprint and revamp the JETAAi website (Current AJET Webmaster, Andrew Cook to assist).
- To serve as a forum for intellectual dialogue to contribute to the recovery of Japan.
- To engage in a planned event to contribute to the recovery of Japan.
Other activities included:
- JETAAi working with AJET to gather names of returning JETS from the Returners’ Conferences and better promotion of JETAA.
- Sharing suggestions for the JET Programme to members of CLAIR and MOFA (from our individual countries’ 2011 National Conference).
- Sharing about our chapters’ fundraising efforts – country specific – in small group discussions.
- Discussing options for re-establishing the connection with alumni & their former BOEs.
- Revamping the JETAA-I membership and further international chapter development.
- Collecting children’s books for the Taylor Anderson Bunkos (Reading Centre) – for children and families in the affected regions.
Stay tuned for a full report which will be available on jetaatoronto.ca in mid December. For more information regarding chapters across Canada, visit, jetaacanada.ca. For more information regarding JETAA International, visit jetalumni.org.