2016-2 Awardees

The Sylff Association is pleased to announce the 11 recipients of SRA awards in the second selection round for fiscal 2016. We received a large number of applications from fellows around the world, including many who are pursuing a doctoral degree at non-Sylff institutions. It was a highly competitive selection.
The applications showed that fellows are actively engaged in various fields of academic learning on a global scale, and it is our pleasure to support their research abroad. Congratulations to all the winning applicants! We send them our best wishes and hope that their study abroad will further enrich their dissertation.
The names of the awardees and their home and the host institutions can be viewed here.

Marta González Cavia, second form left, and Professor Fernando Bayón with the Tokyo Foundation members

Marta González Cavia, a 2016 Sylff fellowship recipient under the new financial scheme at Deusto University, Bilbao, Spain, visited the Tokyo Foundation with her PhD supervisor, Professor Fernando Bayón, on April 18, 2017. She is currently conducting research on the reinvention and regeneration of industrially obsolescent waterfront areas of Bilbao in an attempt to add new values as an urban public space. González is an architect who has long been actively involved in urban regeneration.

Bilbao in northeast of Spain developed as a center of the country’s steel industry beginning in the early twentieth century. Following the decline of the industry, the city has been transforming itself to a city of art and culture, as symbolized by the opening of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 1997. In this context, the transformation of waterfront areas is providing a unique opportunity for the city’s future development.

The regeneration of such areas is often dominated by economic interests, leading, at times, to increased social tensions when nearby urban dwellers suffer a decline in living standards. González thus sought to integrate such urban spaces into the city’s identity and create new value while at the same time upgrading the living standards of local residents.

The Tokyo Foundation wishes her great success in her research and career pursuits.

Asha Gul, a 2016 Sylff fellow at the UNSW Australia Business School.

On November 2, 2016, UNSW Australia Business School celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Sylff program at the university.

UNSW became the thirtieth member of the Sylff community when an endowment was established at the Graduate School of Management in 1991, with the first Sylff fellows being selected in 1992. The school later became the Australian School of Business and is now called the UNSW Business School. To date, Sylff fellowships have supported 200 topnotch graduate students attending this world-renowned business school. At the celebration event, about 25 fellows and school representatives gathered to share memories with old friends and to meet new Sylff acquaintances.

The occasion was an opportunity to bring fellows from different generations together and strengthen their Sylff identity.

Professor Elizabeth Carson reads a letter from Mr. Sasakawa.

Four current fellows gave short presentations on their research and social engagement activities, such as those involving the teaching of business skills and the empowerment of women in local neighborhoods, demonstrating that Sylff fellows not only excel academically but also are change agents committed to the betterment of the community.

A fellow in the 1990s shared her experiences and noted that she still maintains the network that she developed with various Sylff institutions. She encouraged other fellows to take advantage of their membership in the global Sylff community.

Sylff’s distinctive features were emphasized in a congratulations letter from Mr. Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the Nippon Foundation, which was delivered at the anniversary event by Professor and Acting Associate Dean of Research Elizabeth Carson. His message highlighted Sylff’s mission of developing socially engaged leaders and the access fellows gain to a global network of other fellows attending many of the world’s best universities.

Group photo with Sylff fellows.

The success of the program can be credited in large part to the hard work of Sylff steering committee members at the university. In her remarks at the gathering, Tokyo Foundation Director for Leadership Development Yoko Kaburagi expressed her sincere gratitude to the SSC members for their dedication to the administration of the program over the past 25 years.

The UNSW steering committee and the Tokyo Foundation will continue to work closely together in further enriching the Sylff experience, both during the fellowship period and throughout the fellows’ careers.

Happy New Year from Mr. Sasakawa and the Sylff Staff!

(Back row, from left) Yumi Arai, Tomoko Yamada, Keita Sugai, Yoko Kaburagi (Director), Takashi Suzuki
(Seated) Mari Suzuki (Director), Mana Sakamoto, Yohei Sasakawa (Chairman of the Nippon Foundation), Aya Oyamada, Sanae Oda (Executive Director).

The Sylff program will mark its 30th anniversary in 2017, when we will launch a number of new Sylff support programs to better meet fellows’ expectations and launch a Sylff Association to make sure we all stay connected.

SYLFF NEWS 2016

Hoshi, back row center, Voris to his left, and members of the Sylff team.

New Chair of the Board

In June, Takeo Hoshi, the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at Stanford University, joined the Tokyo Foundation as Chair of the Board. Before moving to Stanford in 2012, he taught at UC San Diego for over 20 years, where he served as chair of the Sylff Steering Committee. He congratulated Philip Voris on being selected a Sylff fellow at UC San Diego this year when the latter visited the Foundation in December.

Meeting of Chinese Sylff Administrators

On December 8 and 9, Sylff administrators at 10 Chinese universities (Fudan, Jilin, Lanzhou, Nanjing, Peking, Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Sun Yat-sen) gathered at Peking University to discuss plans for events to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sylff program at 10 Chinese institutions in 2017 and to review Sylff program operations and endowment management.

Sylff program administrators at 10 Chinese universities and members of the Tokyo Foundation.

UNSW Australia Celebrates 25th Sylff Anniversary

On November 2, UNSW Australia Business School in Sydney celebrated 25 years of Sylff with the participation of socially engaged fellows whom the School has supported over the years.

New Scheme

We are pleased to announce that 10 institutions have successfully signed agreements to join the new financial scheme as of December 2016. In 2016, fellowships were awarded to 38 graduate students from six institutions under the new scheme: Coimbra, Institute of Political Education “Pedro Arrupe,” Leipzig, Deusto, Comenius, and Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. In 2017, these institutions will be joined by National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Ruhr University Bochum, University of Chile, and University of Belgrade.

SYLFF SUPPORT PROGRAMS

Five fellows received Sylff Leadership Initiatives awards in 2016, and 28 received Sylff Research Abroad grants. We look forward to receiving many more applications in 2017. We are currently conducting a survey on new support programs and are eager to receive comments from as many fellows as possible. More information about the survey is available at Survey on New Support Programs.

SYLFF@TOKYO

We welcomed many current and graduated fellows as well as Sylff administrators to the Tokyo Foundation in 2016.

December 20
UC San Diego Fellow Applying Cross-Cultural Experience in Pursuing International Affairs Degree

September 13
Sylff Scholars Discuss Their Social Initiatives, Meet with Mr. Sasakawa

June 16
Juilliard Fellow Hopes to Promote Multicultural Communication

June 6
Deepening Collaborative Ties with Portland State University

February 15
Jagiellonian University’s Prestigious Leadership Program

SYLFF WORLDWIDE

We’re happy to share news of notable achievements by Sylff fellows around the world:

July 20
Howard Research Week Highlights Partnership with Sylff Program

July 14
Jadavpur Fellows Visit Hansen’s Disease Patients in Kolkata

January 18
Dylan Corlay Wins Top Prize at Jorma Panula Conducting Competition

The Sylff program will mark its 30th anniversary in 2017, and on this occasion, the Tokyo Foundation plans to launch a number of new Sylff support programs to better fulfill fellows’ needs and expectations, especially those of graduated fellows. We hope to enhance the utility of the program for fellows around the world who are emerging as leaders in tackling global and local issues in their respective fields. This is in keeping with Sylff’s original goal of providing continuing, lifelong support for fellows.

We are eager to learn what you think of our ideas about new support initiatives. Please support this initiatives by sending us your response to the survey. More information is available at the following link : Survey on New Support Programs

2016-1 Awardees

The Tokyo Foundation is pleased to announce the 12 recipients of SRA awards in the first screening round for fiscal 2016. We received a large number of applications from fellows, including many who are pursuing a doctoral degree at non-Sylff institutions. We are glad that they have chosen to reaffirm their ties with the Sylff community, and it is our pleasure to support their research abroad. Congratulations to all the winning applicants! We send you our best wishes and hope that opportunity to study abroad will further enrich and enhance your dissertation. The names of the awardees and their home and the host institutions can be viewed here.

The Tokyo Foundation had the privilege of welcoming two Sylff fellows who are exercising great leadership in their respective areas of expertise to the office on July 21, 2016.

David D. Sussman, who received a Sylff fellowship in 2003 while studying for a master of arts in law and diplomacy (international relations) at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, gave an insightful presentation on his research into “Society and Personal Responsibility: Migration in an Interconnected World.”

He continued to pursue doctoral research at Fletcher and is now a lecturer at Tufts as well as working as a consultant at the Work Bank on the topic of refugee integration. His research focuses on how immigration affects people, actions, and policies in a globalized world. In his presentation, he talked about immigration from three different angles: refugee resettlement, relevance to US politics, and natural resource conflicts. He is currently conducting research on the social implications of natural resource use in Japan and the United States.

The other visitor was Bruno Maneno Kaimwa, who received a two-year Sylff fellowship in 2006–07 at the University of Deusto in Spain. After completing his doctoral program in international and intercultural studies at Deusto, he has devoted his energies to African regional development as a professor of public services at the Institute National du Batiment et Travaux Publics in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo and as a co-founder of a nonprofit organization.

He was in Japan to present a paper at the 31st International Psychology Congress on the theme of “The Dynamics of Local Diversities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” The visit to Japan has a very special meaning, Kaimwa said, “Because this is the tenth anniversary of my affiliation with the Sylff community.”

From left to right, David D. Sussman, Yohei Sasakawa and Bruno Maneno Kaimwa

The visitors also had an opportunity to meet with Chairman Yohei Sasakawa of the Nippon Foundation. The fellows spoke about their research and career and their interests in contributing to society. Mr. Sasakawa emphasized the importance of each fellow in making a positive impact on society and in establishing synergistic networks within the Sylff community.

We are very impressed with the valuable work being performed by both fellows and are pleased that they had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Sasakawa. The Tokyo Foundation is undertaking a number of initiatives to further enrich the Sylff program and to bring the community closer together.

Voices 2016

The Tokyo Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2016 edition of Voices from the Community is now available as a PDF file and in print format. Featuring a new cover design, the booklet contains 20 articles uploaded on the Sylff website over the past 18 months.

Voices 2016 contains a section of articles related to SLI and SRA. More than three years has passed since the Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) program was relaunched in 2013 to support fellows’ social engagement activities. Two articles in this section were written by fellows directly involved in the SLI projects, and three more are reports by program officers. Issues covered range from the refugee crisis in Europe and school bullying to opportunity gaps in education. The articles in the SRA section showcase the diversity of research undertaken abroad, including environmental policy, history, and economic development.

Other articles from across the Sylff community include one on climate changes in India written by a Sylff steering committee member and another on youth leadership in Thailand. The Tokyo Foundation is delighted to have received many contributions from around the world, and we look forward to receiving many more submissions. There are also two pages of photos featuring the many outstanding fellows whom members of the Tokyo Foundation had the pleasure of meeting in 2015.

The booklet can be downloaded as a PDF file here.

We Want to Hear Your “Voice”

We are always eager to receive your contributions to the Sylff site. Reports of your academic or social action achievements should be submitted to the Tokyo Foundation at leadership [a] tkfd.or.jp (replace [a] with @).

Guidelines for writing a Voices article can be downloaded from here.

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Voices from the Sylff Community
July 2016

CONTENTS

Attending the Sylff meeting at Howard University were (front row, left to right) Mari Suzuki, Phiwokuhle Mnyandu, Yohei Sasakawa, Vanessa Oyugi, Markus Weise, (back row, left to right) Alhaji Conteh, Benjamin Aciek Machar, and Pedro L. Cortes-Ruiz.

Howard University is a culturally diverse, research intensive, and historically African-American private university providing educational opportunities of exceptional quality for its students. Located in Washington, DC, the university is committed to producing leaders for the United States and the global community from among its mostly African-American and African-born international students.

On April 11–15, the university hosted Research Week 2016 as part of its efforts to foster the research mission and celebrate its research enterprise. The Sylff Session during the week was held on April 13, the aim of which was to introduce the Sylff program and fellows to the wider university community. Six current Sylff fellows talked about their research activities, the progress they have made thus far, and their experiences as fellows. They also took questions from the floor.

The audience included students, members of the Sylff advisory committee and steering committee, the associate provost for research and graduate studies, and representatives of the Nippon Foundation and Tokyo Foundation. Among those in attendance was Nippon Foundation Chairman Yohei Sasakawa, who is also the WHO Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. During his visit to Washington, he also spoke at a conference—co-hosted by the World Bank and the World Health Organization—aimed at moving mental health to the mainstream of the global development agenda.

Prior to the Sylff Session, Mr. Sasakawa met with members of the Sylff steering committee and Sylff fellows to discuss the Sylff mission and underlying values of the program (see photo). He shared his involvement with Africa by introducing the activities of the Sasakawa Africa Association, an international agricultural development NGO seeking to improve the productivity and profitability of smallholder farms in Africa.

Fellows (from left) Soumya Bhowmick, Sudeshna Dutta, Purbasha Auddy, Mayuri Banerjee, Kheya Samaddar and Reep Pandi Lepcha with the hospital’s staff (in white).

The Jadavpur University Sylff Association (JU-Sylff Association) has been actively engaged in working for the community since it was formed in 2005. On February 23, 2016, six JU Sylff fellows visited the Premananda Memorial Leprosy Hospital in Kolkata, India. The hospital is run by the Leprosy Mission, an international nongovernmental organization that works with individuals and communities affected by Hansen’s disease. The visit to the hospital is made annually by the JU-Sylff Association, inspired by the activities of Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the Nippon Foundation. Kolkata in western India, where Jadavpur University is located, has a long history of the disease, and stigmas still remain.

The fellows visited the hospital in their local community, which now houses 20 patients, and deepened their understanding of this now curable disease. The visit began with a showing of a film titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan about a Pakistani Muslim girl who, unable to either speak or hear, becomes lost in India and meets an Indian Hindu man with whom she develops a warm friendship. The patients, who often feel isolated and excluded from society, were moved by the strong bond spanning differences in language, religion, and country between the girl and the man.

Communicating with patients.

During their visit, the fellows—doctoral candidates Reep Pandi Lepcha, Sudeshna Dutta, and Purbasha Auddy and MA students Soumya Bhowmick, Mayuri Banerjee, and Kheya Samaddar—painted a wall of the hospital ward with trees, birds, flowers, and butterflies in bright colors, helping to lift the mood of the patients and staff members. They also presented board games to be used by the patients, along with handmade cards with the patients’ names on them. These gestures, demonstrating an understanding of the hospital’s work, were deeply appreciated by the staff.

Through this visit, the fellows deepened their insights into the patients’ suffering, loneliness, and isolation due to discrimination and prejudice. They vowed to continue this initiative and have already started planning their next visit. The most recent visit was made possible by financial and moral support from Sylff Program Director and Professor of Economics Joyashree Roy and former Sylff fellows.