Online Seminars "Voices of Students" Held by Turkish and Japanese Students

The 3rd and 4th sessions of video conferencing seminar were held on June 7 and 14, 2020. The series is within the scope of the project "Voices of Students" launched by JICA Turkey Office and Turkish Japanese Foundation in order to contribute to the students who are staying at home during the pandemic, for their socialization and learning.

In both sessions, the junior-high school students from Ercis district in Van province and Gediz district in Kütahya province, who had participated in the Disaster Training Invitation program of JICA and the Turkish Japanese Foundation, made presentations in English together with students from the Tohoku Region (Northeast) of Japan. In the first seminar held on June 7, Turkish and Japanese students exchanged information about cities and culture of both countries. In addition to introduction of the history, culture and cuisine of the regions, they also shared some examples of folk dances and songs by their performances with their peers

In the second seminar, the students focused on disaster and disaster education in the countries. The common feature of the participants of the seminar was that they are from the cities located in the earthquake risky zones, and they had experienced earthquakes in 2011. The audience stated that the seminar was very beneficial since they learnt about the emergency drills that carried out in schools and the measures to be taken as risk mitigation. During the seminar, we also had Q&A session.

H.E. Mr. Akio Miyajima, Ambassador of Japan to Turkey, and H.E. Mr. Hasan Murat Mercan, Ambassador of Turkey to Japan, Mr. Nobuhiro Ikuro, Chief Representative of JICA Turkey Office and Prof. Dr. Nejat Bora Sayan, Chairman of Turkish Japanese Foundation, joined the first seminar and underlined the importance of friendship and cooperation between the two countries. They also stated that these video conference seminars made a significant contribution to the Turkish and Japanese students to know and understand each other. In the second seminar, Mr. Shinichiro Oe, Director of Hyogo Prefecture Paris Office, and Dr. Takashi Oda from Miyagi Education University also emphasized the importance of disaster training and disaster preparedness in their closing speeches.

Turkey Map

Photos from the session on June 7

Photos from the session on June 14