Japanese Government Sponsors Local Woman’s Visit to Disaster-Stricken Region in Japan
At the end of August, Amy Cameron, a teacher of English as a Second Language living in Boston, will travel to the town in Fukushima, Japan where she formerly lived and worked as an Assistant Language Teacher as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program is a Japanese-Government sponsored program established in 1987 to strengthen person-to-person exchanges between citizens of Japan and other countries, by hiring young college graduates to live and work in communities throughout Japan. JET participants work as Assistant Language Teachers in public school classrooms or work in Japanese municipal offices to coordinate international exchange activities. To date, more than 54,000 people from more than 50 counties have participated on the JET Program.
Amy Cameron’s “homecoming” will be sponsored by the Government of Japan, which selected nineteen former JET Program participants, including eight from the US, to visit the region which was affected by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
At the beginning of her weeklong trip to Japan, Ms. Cameron will be briefed on the current situation in the stricken region by an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo, before travelling north to Fukushima prefecture. Her destination will be the city of Nihonmatsu, where she will visit the three junior high schools where she served as a JET Program participant from 1998-2000. Also on her itinerary are trips to view reconstruction efforts as well as several tourist sites.
The invitation program is meant to allow former JET Program participants to see and report on the current conditions and progress which has been made toward recovery in the northeastern region. It is anticipated that those who return to Japan and reconnect with former friends and colleagues will share their experiences and impressions with their social networks via Facebook, Twitter and other media.