The Foundation for the Welfare and Education of the Asian People (FWEAP) was established in December 1969 by our predecessors who were disheartened by the devastation of the Vietnam War. Later, the Refugee Assistance Headquarters (RHQ) was established within the FWEAP to carry out projects entrusted to it by the Japanese government to promote the acceptance and settlement of Indo-Chinese refugees in Japan that had come to existence after the Vietnam War. Currently, the RHQ is engaged in promoting the acceptance and settlement of resettled refugees refugees in Japan who have fled from Myanmar to Malaysia, and in providing Japanese language education for Convention Refugees. At present, the cumulative total number of such refugee settlers in Japan is over 12,000.
As its independent activities, the FWEAP secretariat has been holding the “’Tsudoi’ Festival for Refugees in Japan” annually to support and encourage these over 12,000 settled refugees and concerned parties in their communities, as well as carrying out programs to invite officials engaging in social welfare activities from Asian countries to stay in Japan for approximately one week, enhancing mutual understanding and fostering good cordial relationship. As of the end of 2020, the festival has been held 41 times, and a total of nearly 2,000 officials related to social welfare activities have visited Japan through the invitation program.

We cerebrated the FWEAP’s 50th and the RHQ’S 40th anniversary at the end of 2019. Immediately after that, the COVID-19 pandemic struck all over the world, and in response to it the FWEAP has started several new activities in collaboration with Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Myanmar refugee communities as well as NGOs that support them. The first is to provide food to the refugee settlers in these communities who are in emergent needs due to COVID-19 and to help disseminate information about COVID-19 in their native languages. The second is to support resettled refugee children by offering supplementary classes so that they do not fall behind in their school education. The third is to hold roundtable discussion meetings with refugee communities and NGOs to identify the various problems that refugee settlers face in this country and to find possible solutions, at the occasion of the annual “Tsudoi” Festival for Refugees in Japan. The program to invite officials engaging in social welfare activities from 17 Asian countries and regions to Japan has been suspended due to the interruption of international travel because of the pandemic; however, we plan to resume the program by onsite and online participations as the COVID-19 pandemic starts to subside.

We would deeply appreciate it if you could kindly support the activity of the FWEAP in future.