In April 2021, the Foundation for the Welfare and Education of the Asian People (FWEAP) launched a financial assistance program to support a supplementary class project for refugee children living in Chiba Prefecture and attending elementary and junior high schools in cooperation with the Support 21 Social Welfare Corporation (Support 21).

Since 2010, the FWEAP’s Refugees Assistance Headquarters (RHQ) has been entrusted by the Japanese government to give third-country resettlement refugees (Note) the support they need to successfully resettle themselves in Japan. The RHQ provides a six-month resettlement assistance program, including Japanese language education, for refugees who have arrived in Japan and their families, and continues to give them a wide range of support after they have resettled themselves in different parts of Japan. This support includes working in cooperation with the municipalities in which they live, their employers, and other involved parties. However, there are still cases in which refugee children of compulsory school age who attend elementary schools or junior high schools in Japan struggle to keep up in class due to language barriers and other reasons. To address this problem, the FWEAP decided to offer financial assistance to the supplementary class project which Support 21, an organization with extensive experience and a proven track record in providing supplementary classes for children from other countries, was running for school-aged children and students of third-country resettlement refugees in Chiba Prefecture.

(Note) “Third-country resettlement” refers to moving refugees who are under temporary protection in one country, such as in refugee camps there, to another country that has agreed to accept them. They are to be granted protection and the right to long-term residence in the third country. The Japanese government began to accept Myanmarese refugees from refugee camps in Thailand as third-country resettlement refugees in 2010. In 2019, the government expanded the acceptance to include “refugees temporarily residing in the Asian region.”

In these supplementary classes, elementary and junior high school students gather after school on weekdays as well as on Saturdays, separately at different times on different days of the week, and work on their homework and prepare and review for school classes under the guidance of instructors and university student volunteers, with the goal of developing independent learning habits. In addition, students in their final year of junior high school can also receive special instruction to prepare themselves for high school entrance examinations.

At the same time, workshops and meetings with guardians (interpreter-supported) are also held at regularly to help the guardians learn knowledge concerning the growth of children and develop a better understanding of the school education system in Japan plus other relevant matters. FWEAP employees participate in these as well.