JENESYS East Asia Future Leaders Programme

The Japan Foundation has conducted the "East Asia Future Leaders Programme" under the Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths (JENESYS) Programme from 2007 to 2012. It is a short-term exchange scheme which specifically targets young intellectuals and practitioners of particular activities aged up to 35 years from EAS (East Asia Summit) countries. They were invited to Japan in groups of 17 to 25 in order to deepen understanding on society and culture of Japan through 12 days of field trips, as well as to build a network of East Asia.

Each program was meant to deepen its learning by having professional advisors who help selecting sites for visit, offer keynote lectures, and moderate the discussions.

In five years, 488 young leaders from 15 countries were invited to Japan in 22 different groups. They observed good practices and developed discussions with the Japanese experts and citizens together with young leaders from Japan. The participants were able to exchange their opinions on important common issues in East Asia, despite of the differences in their languages, religions, and other cultural backgrounds, to conduct group presentations at the end.

Participants commented that they were able to widen their views by exchanging ideas from colleagues from various cultural backgrounds, or that they hope to make the best out of the discussion into the workplace.
Refer to 【Participants' Voices】

In addition, 17 past participants from the programs from 2007 to April 2010 got together in June, 2010 at Manila and 16 from the programs from May 2010 to May 2011 got together in July 2011 at Bangkok voluntarily to participate in the workshop, presentations, and discussions which deepened the strength of the network nurtured in Japan.