Oceania Regional Conference
~ Article and photos from JETAA SI ~
The JETAA Oceania Regional Conference took place in Christchurch, New Zealand this year, over the weekend of Oct 16th-18th. Chapters participated from Australia (QLD, VIC, TAS, SA, NSW, Canberra and WA) and New Zealand (Auckland, Wellington and South Island), as well as the respective country representatives. Australia’s Country Representative, Eden Law (ALT Fukushima 2010-2011) reports on the proceedings of the 2015 JETAA Oceania Conference.
As far as I know, the JETAA Oceania Regional Conference is unique in the JETAA world, where two countries share an annual convention – not surprising, considering the geographical proximity and historically close relations of Australia and New Zealand.
As well as chapter delegates, we also had staff members from CLAIR Sydney, and special guest Mr Fukukawa, an execu tive consultant from CLAIR in Tokyo, who shared with us upcoming events and campaigns and how they relate to JET and JETAA.
This year’s theme was Staying Connected – to past and present JETs and JET community, local Japanese organisations and cultural groups, sister city initiatives and of course, with other chapters. Because it’s such a core issue to many chapters, we had a lot to say, discuss and share – opinions, ideas and examples that have worked and didn’t.
Some ideas:
- Maintaining connections with new JETs by following up after a month to see how they are going. If you have a newsletter, ask for article contributions (e.g. best experience, most surprising aspect, what I should have packed). These can also be used as material for the next pre-departure orientation.
- Have a committee retreat – have a mini conference by going away to a nice country location to discuss ideas, plan schedule etc.
- Provide some kind of charity work opportunity to give a sense of purpose and satisfaction
- Market JET Programme as a way to gain transitional skills (e.g. being bilingual means you can see things from different viewpoints)
- Sell JET as a professional development program
- For a fun fundraising idea, have a trivia night where answers/clues can be bought for a small fee. Cheat for charity!
The Country Representative presentations were about what we’d do as CRs, considering that the role tended to be re-invented to suit each new candidate’s needs and personality. Apart from trying to reduce the wheel-reinvention aspect by keeping records and procedure documentation, we will also aim to focus on community and communication. To that end, I put forward a proposal to have regular, scheduled Google Hangouts for Oceania to keep in touch and continue the flow of dialogue, ideas and support for each other (and if possible, get some participants from outside Oceania to join in!) We will also look at ways of supporting recent returnees, whether in the form of support, mentorship or career opportunities.
We also discussed the Satogaeri Project and the Tokyo November conference, where Satogaeri representatives from several countries (and AJET) will meet and discuss several ideas, such as next year’s 30th Anniversary celebratory plans, sporting events in Japan and, most interestingly of all, the possible revival of JETAA International (JETAAI). This chapter had gone dormant for the last few years since losing funding during austerity measures implemented by previous governments but revival seems imminent. There are other further surprising items on the agenda regarding country representatives, so I’ll await the post-conference report with interest.
On a final note, it became clear that the common ingredient running through all successful ideas was networking – building and maintaining relationships which can be tapped into for opportunities. This does require work and commitment – as is the case with anything worthwhile.
