OUR UNITED STATES ALUMNI TEAM IS COMING TO JAPAN FOR THE SECOND TIME!!
- 2014-9-1
- All News, Youth & Alumni
<<<<< News Release >>>>>
OUR UNITED STATES FOSTER CARE ALUMNI TEAM IS COMING TO JAPAN
FOR THE SECOND TIME!!
Based in Seattle, International Foster Care Alliance [IFCA], is the only nonprofit organization that connects child welfare between the United States and Japan, and has 5-member foster care alumni teams in the United States and Japan. We plan to have these two international teams visit each other’s country once a year.
IFCA’s United States Alumni Team will be visiting for the second time from 9/5 through 9/17 and will be engaged in a series of activities in Tokyo and the Kansai area.
These 5 young people, aged 20 through 27, grew up in various foster care settings in the state of Washington, including group and foster homes. They all have years of youth leadership experience. Using their own voices and abilities, they advocated for the improvement of their peer foster youth’s rights and the foster care system.
Their profiles and life stories in both English and Japanese can be viewed from the IFCA alumni blog website. http://ifcaseattle.org/youthandalumni/
In Japan, most foster children still live in large capacity group care facilities and the Japanese government is being pressured by the United Nations to move these children from institutions to more family-like settings such as foster and kinship homes.
The 5-member United States delegation will use their knowledge, experiences and skills to build a foundation for youth-lead advocacy movement in Japan.
To learn about the Japanese foster care systems, the alumni members will visit foster youth and child welfare service agencies to learn how the systems work in this country and will talk with area foster youth, policy makers, social workers and foster parents.
The highlight of the trip is the US and Japan Alumni Teams’ “International Youth Summit” at the Nippon Foundation Building on September 7th, 2014. For more information, please open this link.
http://www.ifcaseattle.org/jp/news/all/267/
For the September 14th, 2014 IFCA International Youth Summit in Osaka, please see the link below:
http://www.ifcaseattle.org/jp/news/all/280/
Please spread the word about this first US-Japan Foster Care Summits in Tokyo and Osaka!
If you want to speak to our alumni members and/or if you want to know more about our organization, please feel free to email us at info@ifcaseattle.org
Thank you.
Miho Awazu, President, IFCA
