Education was taken up as a primary theme for the first time at the 1999 G8 Summit in Cologne, and the need for international exchanges of students, teachers, and so on raised in a G8 Communique. After this Summit, the then-Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi made a pronouncement to the effect that Japan will strive further in international exchanges of students and teachers, including new measures making use of UNESCO.

 In line with this, Japan came to contribute to UNESCO Headquarters as a form of Funds-in-Trust for the Promotion of International Cooperation and Mutual Understanding, with the goals of promoting mutual understanding among the students and teachers of the world and building international understanding.

 Furthermore, UNESCO Headquarters has concluded with the UNESCO/ACCU (Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO) a project commission agreement with part of the funds-in-trust. The ACCU has been utilizing this funds-in-trust to promote mutual exchanges between the students and teachers over the world and implemented following programmes aimed at building international understanding.

（For further details, please look at the ACCU website.）

1.University Student Exchange Programme for both undergraduate and graduate students.

 This Programme provides opportunities to undertake projects primarily aimed at international cooperation, mutual understanding and high-level specialized research on particular themes in line with UNESCO’s objectives so as to enable university students to deal with the new issues raising in increasingly globalized contemporary society. It promotes exchanges with students from all over the world and works on expansion of education’s horizon and qualitative improvements. There are both “acceptance” programmes inviting students from universities in other UNESCO member-nations to Japan and “dispatch” programmes sending Japanese university students to other UNESCO member-nations  especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

2.High School Students Exchange Programme for high school students, leading teachers, etc

 In order to advance international understanding Education for high school students and back up private-sector exchanges among them, this programme supports both the acceptance of high school students  mainly from the Asia-Pacific region-into Japan and the dispatch of Japanese high school students to that same region.

 Moreover, using this scheme, support is also sometimes offered for exchanges between UNESCO Associate Schools (AS) in Japan and ASs in other countries.

©ACCU

3.Other International Programmes for teachers, civil servants, specialists, etc.

 We also carry out programmes of support for specialists from Japan to participate in conferences and workshops that are implemented in various parts of the world on theme in line with UNESCO’s objectives. There are also programmes enabling specialists  primarily from the Asia-Pacific region  to participate in conferences, etc. being held in Japan.

 For more information about participation, etc. in such programmes, please contact ACCU directly.