12-member youth team leaves for Japan today

A 12-member youth delegation from Bahrain will leave for Japan tonight  (Wednesday) to take part in the 47-day Japanese programme ‘The Ship for World Youth Leaders’, where they will be spending their time together with the people from other nationalities, Ambassador of Japan Kiyoshi Asako announced at a press conference on the embassy premises yesterday.

He congratulated those who were going to participate in the programme. 

The other participants in the programme would be from Australia, Chile, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the United Arab Emirates and Japan.

Bahrain has been given the chance for 13 times to participate in the SWY programme and a total of 126 Bahraini youths have participated in it since 1997. 

“This programme is one of the most important Japanese government projects, which has been strengthening the relationship between Japan and Bahrain,” said the ambassador.

 He said that ever since the SWY programme was started, the youth exchanges had greatly contributed to promoting the understanding among youths by increasing knowledge of diversity of cultures.

The participants would receive various experiences through this programme and the most significant difference in this year’s programme is the changing of the overseas route of the ship.

During the last three years, the programme had been limited to a domestic route in Japan but this year the participants would also visit Singapore, India and Sri Lanka.

Speaking to DT News, Commercial, Cultural and PR Section, Japan Embassy, Keisuke Utsuno, said they were feeling proud to host such a big programme.  He said that the main purpose of the programme was to provide an opportunity to the youth belonging to different countries of the world to have an interaction among themselves and understand the differences among different
cultures.

Fatema Fuad, a delegate, said that she was 18 when she first dreamed to go for this programme and now she was 22 years old. She said that she would try her level best to give the other participants an excellent image of Bahrain during her stay there.

“It will be a life changing experience for me,” she says.