NEWS

Japan Education Pathways Network (JEPN) meeting held face-to-face

Update: May 17, 2023

On April 18, 2023, the 6th meeting of the Japan Education Pathways Network (JEPN), a network among Japanese universities accepting Ukrainian refugee students, was held at the ICU International Conference Room. This was the first time for JEPN to meet face-to-face.

Participants in the JEPN, sponsored by Pathways Japan (represented by Mr. Norimasa Orii), are Japanese universities that have accepted or are considering accepting Ukrainian refugee students under the cooperation of Pathways Japan and the Japan ICU Foundation based in New York, USA. This time, 16 universities met to report the current status of acceptance, discuss issues to be tackled, and introduce good practice.

In his opening remarks at the meeting, President Shoichiro Iwakiri of ICU stressed the importance of building a network among universities to offer humanitarian support through education, rather than working on an individual basis.

In the morning session, the participants shared various information, including how to provide psychological care for Ukrainian students, how to help them actively interact with Japanese students, and how many of them wish to enter regular courses.

At the end of the session, Mr. Orii introduced to the participants the Minimum Requirement, developed by the Global Taskforce on Education Pathways, an organization launched in 2020 to guarantee the safety and rights of refugee and displaced students. He thanked the participants for their activities generally in line with this policy. Pathways Japan is the only Global Taskforce member from Asia.

In addition, Ms. Takada from the Japan ICU Foundation told that Japan will serve as co-chair of the Global Taskforce meeting to be held in December 2023 and that a meeting for practitioners of Education Pathways will be held under the auspices of Sophia University on May 17 to 18 at the Diet members' office building.

The afternoon session was devoted to group work and information exchange. The themes of the group work were 1) exams for admission/transfer admission into degree programs and credit transfer; 2) securing of future funding; and 3) how to make use of this experience in the future.

This meeting proved to be very useful in sharing challenges faced by individual universities and considering future directions.