Japan: International Professional Opportunity

Project Title: International Seminar on Cross-Cultural Education: Preparing Grassroots Community Leaders to be Global Citizens
March 13-22, 2009

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Project Description
The project focuses on preparing and educating community leaders and University faculty and staff to be global citizens at a grass-root level. The project attempts to critically analyze the cultural nature using the Contrast Culture Method, a training program designed for analyzing human culture through cross-cultural training developed by Dr. Edward Stewart.  Through this cross-cultural training program, the participants are expected to be involved in educational lectures as well as community outreach projects as a form of social science laboratory. 

Certainly, there are great benefits in being culturally sensitive and aware in today’s global world. We seek to not only develop cultural intelligence, but also to be leaders in this area in guiding our community towards greater cross-cultural acceptance. This is achieved through a series of rigorous workshops conducted in another country: Japan.

Project Learning Outcome 
The workshops envision developing a new curriculum or a set of cross-cultural training programs. Participants will be able to contribute to building a culture of peace at their home communities.  In addition, the project attempts to develop new educational tools that will be a part of education, corporate or community non-profit training curriculum of global citizenship and social responsibility in order to train future community leaders.

I. Global Citizenship and Civic Responsibility

• Understanding the concept of culture as the central concept of social science
• Identifying the source of aggression embedded in many cultures: aggression as universal human behavior
• Preparing community leaders with skills for cross-cultural facilitation which focus on building the culture of peace in the local community

II. Cross-Cultural Training Methods

• Role-play possible situations in a cross-cultural environment
• Identify and explain one's own values and identity
• Design and develop cross-cultural training in participants' expertise and disciplines
• Define and produce his/her own individual learning plan
• Use available methods to document cross-cultural experience - journal writing, photography, videography, and other available forms of recording and editing methods
• Summarize the participants' cross-cultural experience in a target destination culture
  
  

Project Requirement
There will be a series of activities required for the participants to be part of throughout the project. The participants are expected to conduct readings, participate in discussions and workshops, and produce a collective publication at the end of the project. The contents will be determined in near future.

Project Outline

February 2009 Before Travel: Pre-Departure Orientation
A series of learning sessions are planned to prepare the participants to be ready for the training program in Japan. The contents include identifying cross-cultural conflict issues involving Japanese and non-Japanese cultures in Japan, and provide suggestions to build culture of peace among Japanese and non-Japanese people in the community. This orientation will consist of two parts:

I. Online

• Complete two reflection activities and share with your section
• Complete Cross-Cultural Training theory and group assignment
• Define your project and begin researching
  

II. Face-to-Face

• There will be several meetings on the Conway campus. This participation is required for all participants. The sessions will cover skill-building exercises that assist the participants to document cross-cultural experience in Japan. Other contents are TBD

March 13-22, 2009: In Japan
All the traveling time is based on the U.S. Eastern Standard Time. Although a more complete schedule will be determined, you could expect the following:

April 2009: After Travel
There will be several meetings on the Conway campus. This participation is required for the all participants. The sessions will cover skill-building exercises that assist the participants to document cross-cultural experience in Japan. The contents are TBD.

Application Procedure

Candidates who are young professionals and have never been to Japan are encouraged to apply.

For more information or an application, contact
internationalprograms@coastal.edu