For one special week, from August 12th to August 16th, Cross Education will move the base of its Summer Academy operation to the OKUTAMA＋Old Furusato Junior High School facility at 594 Kawai town site. There, for one entire week, the Summer Academy will engage in the Cross-Okutama International Obon Outdoor Camp experience. In an effort to bring sustainable international education opportunities to the residents of Okutama. Cross Education intends to grow this program annually, inviting more participants each year from Japan and countries from around the world. This year the Academy is hosting kids from Japan, Russia, Canada, the US, Finland, Australia, Morocco, France, Georgia, Taiwan, and beyond, and we look forward to sharing the experience with the kids and teens of the Okutama region. Cross programs tie in local, regional, and globally relevant applied learning opportunities that highlight culture, society, arts, technology, environment, and internationalism. We look forward to those using the things that are important to the people of the Okutama region in order to help kids and teens to learn more about each other, and the wider world around them. We believe this, in partnership with the community residents, businesses, schools, and municipal authorities, can grow into a local highlight and a strong example of regional internationalism.
Cross Education was established in 2018 to build international education in Japan in a new and exciting way, and to bring an exciting new learning opportunities to Japan for bot local and inbound international students. The President of Cross Education, Greg Culos, spent the majority of his career in Canada bringing students to Canada to participate in globally relevant education opportunities. When he returned to Japan in 2012, he discovered that international education in Japan was almost entirely dedicated to international families who already lived in Japan. He discovered, to his amazement, that Japan had almost no culture of inbound youth student mobility for programs of international relevance.
So, the mission of Cross Education is to be the vehicle to accomplish that goal.
The directors of Cross education, through their efforts to reach out to international student sources from around the world, have discovered there is a massive amount of interest in this regard. Students from all corners of the planet see Japan as an exciting destination for international studies, and a unique option from the traditional centers around the world. And Cross has set out to do what few to none have made efforts to accomplish: to create the systems required for students to access not only programs of relevance, but also the services they require to come to Japan as students. In its first year, Cross Education has established means for students to select programs of interest, provide accommodations and services, and begin growing, internationally, a culture of inbound students coming to this country to participate in applied learning opportunities, in English, in the arts, sciences, technology, engineering, fine arts, outdoors, language, culture and more. What is an entirely unique approach to international programs in other parts of the world, Cross programs are equally relevant to inbound international students, resident international students, and local Japanese students.
Cross programs are a where the youth of the world can truly meet to learn things that are relevant anywhere.
Cross has the full and collaborative support and partnership of Showa Women’s University, the municipal government of Mine City in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the UNESCO Chair on Global Education, and Okutama+ Community Building and Tech Incubation Center in the Okutama region of Tokyo. Cross Education is not only proceeding along its path towards its goal, but also achieving one further of its objectives: to open the regional centers of Japan to participate in the growth of its brand of international education opportunities. In this way, Cross Education is in fact pursuing the goal of helping revitalize regional Japan with an exciting proposition to both local inhabitants and the international community as a whole.
The Cross Education International Summer Academy, in particular, based mostly from the Showa Women’s University campus, has dedicated two of its seven Academy weeks to two regional locations.
The 1st Annual Akiyoshidai Youth Summit
From August 26th to 30th, the entire Academy will be relocated to Mine City in Yamaguchi Prefecture where they will include the local community in their activities, and execute what will be the 1st Annual Akiyoshidai Youth Summit. This is intended to be the first year of an event that will grow across the upcoming years, becoming a signature locus of International education for the region that hopefully will act as a catalyst for further international education industry growth in the region. This project, where youth from around the world will gather to work together on globally relevant issues, is fully supported by the City of Mine, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and the UNESCO Chair on Global Education.
Obon Week Okutama Outdoor Camp
In the same spirit of regional revitalization and the determination to grow inbound youth international education opportunities, Cross Education, with the collaborative support of Okutama+ Community Building and Tech Incubation Center, Cross Education will transport its the entire Academy population to the community of Okutama, in the foothills of the Japanese Alps, to experience a week of international education and learning inspired by all of the social cultural assets that the region offers. The goal is, as in Akiyoshidai, to open up new opportunities for people from around the world, and locally within the communities of the surrounding region. Among the activities planned for this week is an International Summer Festival where the local community can participate with the international participants in a festival celebrating both local and international cultures.
For more information, call us, or contact us at basecamp@cross.education.