Wishing You Peace and Joy in the New Year!

(Back row, from left) Tomoko Yamada, Takashi Suzuki (Director), Kaoru Matsushita (Director), Akiko Inagaki; (middle row) Yoko Kaburagi, Sanae Oda (Executive Director), Masahiro Akiyama (President), Akiko Imai (Executive Director), Yukiko Otani;(seated) Keita Sugai, Aya Oyamada, Yumi Arai, Mari Suzuki (Director), Mana Sakamoto

NEW SYLFF FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

We are pleased to announce that this past October, fellowships were given to five students at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), the under the new Sylff Fellowship Program. The program is being offered jointly by The Nippon Foundation and Tokyo Foundation to all schools in the Sylff program...(more...)

SYLFF SUPPORT PROGRAMS

Three fellows were selected as Sylff Leadership Initiatives recipients in 2015 so far, and their reports can be read here. In addition, 28 Sylff Research Abroad grants were awarded. The reports of SRA awardees on the Sylff website are classified by fiscal year-round number. We look forward to receiving many more applications in 2016.

SYLFF WORLDWIDE

We're very happy to share news of outstanding achievements by Sylff fellows around the world, including:

February 24
Conductor Holly Mathieson, a Sylff fellow from New Zealand, organized a concert on March 18, 2015, in Berlin, Germany, to launch Horizont Musik-Kollektiv, an organization to celebrate the works...(more...)

June 1
At the Institute of Political Education in Italy, Sylff fellowships are granted through the “Idea-Action Research Program” to encourage research projects in the social sciences and...(more...)

September 5
Marisa Hamamoto, a 2007 Sylff fellowship recipient at Keio University, has launched Infinite Flow, America’s first professional wheelchair ballroom dance company. It is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that...(more...)

SYLFF@TOKYO

We welcomed many current and graduated fellows, and the comittee chairman to the Tokyo Foundation in 2015.

January 29
Violinist Johannes Fleischmann, a 2013 Sylff fellowship recipient at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, made a tour of venues around Japan in October 2014,including a special lunchtime...(more...)

February 24, September 8
Lindsey Lim, who received a Sylff fellowship in 2014 at Columbia University, visited the Tokyo Foundation in January 6 and June 4, 2015, to give presentations...(more for article on Feb. 24...) (more for article on Sep. 8...)

May 25
Numtip Smerchuar, a 2006 Sylff fellowship recipient at Chiang Mai University, visited the Tokyo Foundation on May 11, 2015. While working as a lecturer in the School of Political and Social Science...(more...)

June 26
Professor Ulrike Schaede, chairperson of the Sylff program at the School of Global Policy and Strategy (formerly the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies), University of California,...(more...)

December 18
On December 4, 2015, Ngo Hong Anh Thu, a 2014 Sylff fellowship recipient at Vietnam National University, Hanoi, visited the Tokyo Foundation and gave a presentation on her doctoral research....(more...)

We are pleased to announce that this past October, fellowships were given to five students at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), under the new Sylff Fellowship Program.

The program is being offered jointly by The Nippon Foundation and Tokyo Foundation to all schools in the Sylff program, and the University of Coimbra was the first institution to take advantage of this opportunity. Five students were nominated by the university, all of whom were approved by The Tokyo Foundation for funding.

Sylff Fellows at the University of Coimbra (left to right):
Paulo Jorge Nogueira Ramos, Valéria Barancelli, Nuno José Henriques Baetas da Silva, Francisca Rosendo de Carvalho e Silva and Felipe Figueiredo Martins

The new initiative has been developed as an alternative to the conventional Sylff Program, enabling participating schools to pass on the burden of fund-management to the Tokyo Foundation, and thus focus solely on running the fellowship itself. Participating schools first of all return their endowment to The Nippon Foundation, following which fellowships are distributed directly to students from out of a Tokyo Foundation-managed fund established through a grant from The Nippon Foundation. Under this program, up to USD 30,000 in fellowships is provided annually to outstanding students at each participating institution.

Candidates are nominated by their institution, following which the Tokyo Foundation conducts a review and makes the final selection. Successful nominees receive funding directly from the Tokyo Foundation.

It is important to note that fellows and institutions under the new program enjoy equal status as those under the conventional Sylff program. For fellows, this includes eligibility for support programs, while institutions are encouraged to continue to play active roles in Sylff administrators’ meetings.

At present, approximately 10 institutions are in the process of introducing the new program. We would like to congratulate Coimbra University and its five new fellows for the landmark role that they are playing in the Sylff Fellowship Program, and we wish the fellows every success in their academic careers.

Sylff secretariat on November 9, 2015

University of Coimbra fellows and board members for Sylff in front of the university

SRA Awardees for Fiscal 2015, First Round

The Tokyo Foundation is pleased to announce the 12 recipients of SRA awards in the first screening round for fiscal 2015. We received a large number of applications from fellows around the world, and the selection process was very competitive. All applications were carefully screened for eligibility, the feasibility of the proposal, and the relevance of the proposed research to the applicant’s academic pursuits.

Congratulations to the winning applicants! We send you our best wishes and hope that the findings of your research abroad will further enrich and enhance your dissertation.

The name of the awardees and their home and the host institutions can be viewed here.

First click (1) Voices, and then the (2) Guidelines banner in the left-hand column.

“Voices from the Sylff Community” is a special section of the Sylff website featuring articles by Sylff fellows about their academic and social-engagement activities. Fellows can also share their analysis of or perspectives on global and grassroots issues. The Tokyo Foundation hopes that many more of you will submit articles to this site and create greater synergies among the fellows.

For the fellows who would like to write a “Voices” article, we have posted the General Guidelines for Writing a “Voices” Article on the Sylff website. Please read the instructions carefully and submit all requested data.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Tokyo Foundation at any time. We look forward to hearing from you and receiving your article!

Leadership Development, Tokyo Foundation
Email: leadership[a]tkfd.or.jp (replace [a] with @)

In December 2014, the Tokyo Foundation hosted a meeting for administrators of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff) on the theme of “Challenges and Opportunities in an Interconnected World.” The approximately 120 participants of the highly fruitful meeting not only learned about recently introduced programs, including the option of switching to a new financial scheme, but also strengthened their ties with the Sylff community, including over 10 invited Sylff fellows who have emerged as leaders embodying the Sylff ideal.

This report of the Sylff Administrators Meeting has been prepared by the Tokyo Foundation to promote a better understanding of the mission of the Sylff program and its decentralized focus, facilitate interuniversity dialogue and collaboration, and, most importantly, to maintain and build on the momentum generated by the meeting to enrich the Sylff experience and elevate the value of a Sylff fellowship.

The Tokyo Foundation expresses its deepest gratitude to all representatives of Sylff institutions who took the time to attend the meeting in Tokyo and for their contributions and friendship during the meeting. We hope you will enjoy reading this report.

Please click on the image to jump to the Administrators Meetings page, where you can download the report and view photos of the meeting.

The articles uploaded on the Sylff website over the past 15 months have been complied into the June 2015 edition of Voices from the Sylff Community. The book contains 14 articles on such topics as land reform, information systems, economic development, sociolinguistics, youth leadership, and musical education, representing the diverse and global nature of the Sylff community. The Tokyo Foundation is pleased to have received many contributions from fellows around the world over the past year.

One feature of Voices 2015 is a section on articles related to SRA and SLI. More than two years have passed since Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) was re-launched in 2013 to support the social action initiatives of fellows, and it is now bearing fruit, as demonstrated by the articles contained herein—including those written by other Sylff fellows who observed or attended the projects. The articles in the SRA section showcase the diversity of the research being conducted by fellows.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sylff program at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Sylff Administrators Meeting held in Tokyo in December 2014 are introduced with photos of participants. There are also two pages of photos at the back of the booklet featuring the many outstanding fellows whom members of the Tokyo Foundation had the pleasure of meeting in 2014.

The booklet can be downloaded as a PDF file here.

We Want to Hear Your “Voice”

We’re 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 @).

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Voices from the Sylff Community
June 2015

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