Date: 26 October 2019
Venue: General Education Building 1,
4th Floor Training Rooms 1,2,3
On October 26th 2019, the very first Kagoshima University Host Family Recruitment Information Session event was held in the training rooms of the Korimoto Campus’ General Education Building’s 4th floor.
The Global Initiative Center worked with the Kagoshima University Co-operative Society and called out to the local community and parents of elementary and junior high school students in Kagoshima Prefecture to participate in this event, where citizens interested in international exchange and homestay hosting will have the opportunity to hear about the experiences of host families and interact with international students from our university. Our university’s international students come from many different countries, including the United States, Australia, Brazil, South Korea, China, and one of those who can speak some Japanese participated in this session.
Families interested in hosting international students in their home either overnight or on a day trip after talking with them, will be given the chance to host one or two of our international students in their house in November for a trial and then have them host students from the USA in January 2020.
The information session was opened at 2:00 pm. After a welcome address and overview of the Homestay Program by Professor Sumie Nakatani, a representative of the University Co-op, Mr. Iwakiri, talked briefly about the business of the Co-op and how they had some previous experience with homestay programs. This was then followed by the screening of a short video documentary created by Specially Appointed Assistant Professor Rafael Marmolejo.
The documentary followed four families and their experiences hosting international students. During the video, the participants listened attentively to its content of hosting a foreign student in a home-stay or home visit, such as the life of a foreign student, special food requirements, and communication methods that can be used to overcome the language barrier.
After the screening, two host family members from the documentary (Mr. Ohira and Ms. Wada) were introduced on stage and they hosted a Q&A session. This was then followed by ice-breaking games with potential host families and international students. A “Homestay Program Guide” pamphlet was handed out, and Specially Appointed Associate Professor Toshihiko Shine gave detailed explanations.
The briefing session was attended by 14 international students from the university, 18 families (33 people) living in Kagoshima Prefecture who are considering hosting a host family, 2 families with host family experience from Izumi City, Kagoshima, the Kagoshima University Co-operative Society, and university staffs. The number of families who registered as hosts after the briefing session was 16 families in total, including those who could not attend the session and registered by e-mail or fax.
The results show that the local community are not only very open to hosting foreigners, but they enjoyed being able to work with the university that is open and vibrant.
The event has been a great start to what will be an ongoing campaign to build stronger relations between the university and the local community through our Hosting / Homestay Program.
The Global Initiative Center plans to continue recruiting hosts on a regular basis. We will keep you posted on the next homestay experience (from next January), so please join us if you are interested.
