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OUR YOUTH LEARN & LEAD
Are you interested in developing and enhancing your leadership?
ALPHA Education provides, supports, and facilitates opportunities for youths and young adults in their education aspirations, social activism interests, and employability competencies as illustrated in the diagram below:
ALPHA Chapter Retreats: Youth-led with a customized agenda of participatory learning based on input from ALPHA University Chapters. It is an annual event where post-secondary students come together to learn from each other’s leadership experiences of having led projects during the year.
Workplace Experiences: The key take-aways from this experiential leadership training are a more informed understanding of positive social activism and employability career competencies that cannot be obtained in classroom learning. Secondary and post-secondary students are matched with organization projects and work along side ALPHA Education staff.
Speaking Engagements: Those who have undertaken internships or research work with ALPHA Education are provided recommendation and/or support to be speakers at conferences, workshops and ALPHA Education events. This opportunity acknowledges the significant role young adults have in knowledge construction and scholarship with respect to the history of World War II in Asia and its legacy post-war developments, including current day issues that our connected world faces.
Community Services: ALPHA Education offers service leadership through voluntary opportunities. Each opportunity is personalized to match interest and time commitment of the youth. These opportunities are for secondary, post-secondary to young professionals who aspire to make a difference to local community issues and/or events.
Study Tour: Leadership of young people with ALPHA Education is paramount. This type of learning consists of either being on study tours with ALPHA staff or ALPHA enabled study tour. The latter is specifically relevant to those who seek opportunities to learn from experts and institutions overseas as part of their course of study and research interests. They are introduced to and include meetings with experts such as historians, curators, professors, survivors, and researchers.
For further details, please contact us at info@alphaeducation.org
Leading & Learning
ALPHA Chapter Retreats
During the 2018 Chapters Retreat at ALPHA Education Centre, members of ALPHA University Chapters reported on their past year’s activities. Members had the unique opportunity to give and receive targeted feedback on their leadership and event planning, from fellow chapters and ALPHA Education staff. The retreat included designing workshops on relevant historical themes, ranging from the “comfort women” issue to biochemical warfare. Then, each team facilitated a mock workshop, focusing on youth as facilitators of learning.
Speaking Engagements
Dozens of youth volunteers, speakers, interns, and chapter leaders gathered under a single roof to engage with families, politicians, veterans, and supporters at ALPHA 2018 gala. Youth leadership was centre-stage, ranging from being emcees, to a poem reading on the experience of “comfort women”, to the keynote speech on the impact of Unit 731. It was an evening where youth voices are showcased and their work on peace, justice, and reconciliation recognized. Most important their compelling voices inspired, engaged, and connected the gala guests to the significance of ALPHA Education.
Workplace Experiences
Summer 2019, ALPHA Education office is brimming with youth interns collaborating on projects ranging from historical research, lesson development, creative design, and human rights-related work. The interns are from different countries and have opportunities to learn from and work with ALPHA Education staff who provide coaching and supervision. In the process, interns develop both field-specific and general employability skills, as well as often times a refined passion for social justice work including authentic exposure to working in the not-for-profit sector.
Community Services
The Scotiabank Waterfront Run is an event that ALPHA Education participates in each year. Leading up to the event, we have seen young people far and wide come to raise awareness about ALPHA Education’s work. On the morning of, they run or walk long distances, between 5 and 42 kilometers, in support of ALPHA. Some have cited the importance of exercise in participating. Others felt passionately about stepping up to the challenge. However, all who participated were motivated to provide their time and service to help create a brighter, more equitable, and informed world.
Study Tour
We learn by feeling and by experience the continuing implications of past conflicts and the importance of advocating for peace, justice, and reconciliation. Adrian Zee was one of two youths, among the ALPHA Education delegates, on the 2019 Japan Study Tour to Kobe, Okinawa, Nagasaki and Tokyo. In Okinawa, Adrian had the opportunity to visit a local art museum focused on peace, met survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, and heard from the local Japanese students. He also witnessed the implications of U.S. military bases throughout the island, since the U.S. Navy Battleship landed 80 years.