Day Three - The EDUCATION Session

Day Three Report

Date:  October 25, 2020

Location:  BMW GROUP Tokyo Bay

Highlight Video: OYW Facebook Page

Related News:

JNTO

日経 x woman Terrace
(Japanese)

The EDUCATION Session

"Re-imagining Education In The 21st Century"

in partnership with

Junsuke Usami

CEO
Unlock Potential

Tsuyoshi Domoto

Country Manager
Saturday Kids Japan

Yusuke Matsuda

Country Manager
Crimson Education Japan

Naomi Iwazawa

CEO
Culmony

Atoka Jo

News Anchor
NewsPicks

Tsuyoshi Domoto

OYW Coordinating Ambassador, Tsuyoshi Domoto, started off the EDUCATION session with some humor and a brief story of how his passion for education was born. He shared a simple but moving story about his home stay experience in Honduras where he discovered his homestay sister reading the same book over and over. When asked why, she replied that they only had 4 books in the whole house. It was Tsuyoshi’s first true leadership opportunity and he seized it by gathering the community together to create the town’s first ever community library. Today, Tsuyoshi continues to show his passion for education as Country Manager for Saturday Kids Japan, a coding and robotics school that uses the power of code to inspire young children in Japan to become curious, self-directed learners for life.

The EDUCATION session Words Of Wisdom speaker was invited to the Caucus for similar reasons. Junsuke Usami has been a passionate and vocal proponent of diversity and inclusion as well as education. Junsuke, who is CEO of Unlock Potential, shared the main theory of his book, “Lead the Jibun,” which is to have a clear understanding of what you want to do with your life, and that will help you pave the path towards living a happy and fulfilling life.

Junsuke Usami

The resulting panel discussion included two youthful OYWJ Ambassadors, Naomi Iwazawa (CEO of Culmony) and Atoka Jo (News Anchor at NewsPicks) who were joined by our special guest, Yusuke Matsuda (Country Manager of Crimson Education Japan).

In the education session, the panelists not only shared their thoughts but debated with each other on topics as diverse as Covid-19’s impact on education and educational equity, the importance of teaching diversity to kids as well as how to educate young girls so that they can assume positions of leadership in the future.

“A one size fits all educational policy does not fit every student’s need.”

- Yusuke Matsuda -

Yusuke’s journey into the field of education was initially motivated by a traumatic experience with bullying in junior high school. Unlike the many students in Japan who also suffer from this situation, Yusuke was fortunate to have a teacher to step in and support him. Yusuke knew at a young age that he needed to become a person like his teacher and to find others like him to make sure that other kids get the education they deserve. He is a firm believer that the “overseas experience” is critical for young Japanese students and business people to see Japan objectively and critically and predicts that the recent boom in online education will continue to grow and thrive as more students and young professionals seek out tailor-made education experiences.

Naomi Iwazawa

Naomi enlightened everyone with the fact that she had attended a number of different schools in multiple countries. She highlighted that Japan still faces unspoken discrimination against those students with international experience and backgrounds. Her company, Culmony, was born from the necessity for harmonizing education with culture and to give more opportunities for Japanese students to interact with students with rich, international experiences. She agreed with Yusuke that the pandemic has forced everyone to see and recognize the various online education options. But, she also added that because of different learning styles and personalities, there will still be a human element that needs to be considered.

Atoka shared a very unique educational experience in which she attended 2 schools simultaneously while growing up in Osaka; a public Japanese school and an international school. High school was in Shanghai where she added Chinese to her repertoire of languages, and college was in Abu Dhabi where she met students from all over the world. Additional trips to Argentina and Ghana opened her eyes to the great discrepancies in education around the world. “Innate curiosity” is key to enriching education and Atoka’s liberal arts program at Himeji School For Girls is built around this concept and not just a hard curriculum decided at a national level in a “one size fits all” fashion.

Atoka Jo

The session concluded on a strong note where future action steps were announced by Domoto including the joint project between Saturday Kids Japan and Grameen Nippon to train and empower single mothers with coding skills. In addition, participants were invited to learn more by participating in Culmony’s diversity workshops or joining Stanford’s e-entrepreneurship program.

Key Takeaways:

  • Focus on dialogues but be sure to respect personal and cultural differences.
  • Leverage the new normal and the pandemic to explore new educational opportunities online and tailor your education to your own needs.
  • If you see a student or a child struggling, stand up for them and be their ally – it may save their life! 
  • Teachers can be students as well, learning from students and their opinions and experiences.
  • Work towards an educational infrastructure where all students have the same resources and opportunities.

In Closing

Yosuke Tamura

After a brief recap of the 2.5 days of activities and sessions and an inspirational highlights video, OYW Coordinating Ambassador, Yosuke Tamura gave a short speech on his own personal experience and why he is still inspired by One Young World and the many Ambassadors who continue to work hard to make the world a better place for everyone so that no one is left behind. He concluded by saying that OYW ambassadors will take action based on the Tokyo caucus, will work hard to make social impact, and will present their achievements at the session of OYW Tokyo Summit 2022 for the world.

Finally, the event wrapped with a video message from OYW co-founder, David Jones, announcing the excitement surrounding the OYW Summit in Tokyo from May 23 to 26 in 2022 and another video showing the power of One Young World over the years.

David Jones

Special thanks to BMW and all of our amazing partners and to everyone who helped make the One Young World Tokyo Caucus a huge success! We look forward to more discussions and more action-based initiatives and will see you all again at Munich in 2021 and Tokyo in 2022!

KEY DATA:

  • Over 25 partners
  • 110 person live audience
  • 1,000 registered participants
  • 3,500+ live streams from 46 countries
  • 300,000+ social media reach
OYW TOKYO CAUCUS 2020 – Day Three Report – The EDUCATION Session
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