October 28, 2017
RASA’s Financial Assistance for Asian Students
Rural
Asia Solidarity Association (RASA) is an NGO which is engaged in international cooperation
and exchanges with developing countries. Thailand was the country for RASA to
have special commitments. RASA’s Financial Assistance is a part of its
activities to help Asian students studying in Japan learn more comfortably to
attain skills and information for development of their mother countries.
This
assistance was initiated with donation made by SAN’ICHI-KAI, the alumni society
of the seminar of Professor KOMATSU Ryuji of the then professor of Keio
University, Tokyo in 1985. MTB15, another leading sponsor, joined in 1986.
Thereafter many individual and group donors have participated in this
assistance program.
This
financial assistance, which amounted to one hundred thousand Japanese yen for a
student, was designed to avail awardees of some extra expenses, which were not
affordable from regular sources of income. RASA and all sponsors wished if
awardees could spend this assistance for whatever purposes such as a trip for
fun, expensive equipment, a set of books and any other aims fulfilling needs of
students which were not easily possible in daily life.
RASA’s
Financial Assistance had a policy to serve for students who had difficulties to
receive scholarship from other sources. Therefore, it highlighted the
under-privileged Asian students studying in Japan, and set special conditions
for eligibility for this assistance. More specifically an applicant had to
satisfy one of the following conditions:
1) 30
years old or older,
2) A
“kenkyu-sei (research student)” or “bekka-sei (student in a special course)”,
3) A
refugee or asylum seeker.
RASA’s fund for the financial assistance
was exhausted through the assistance made in 2017. Therefore, the fiscal year
2017 is the final year for RASA to conduct this assistance program. RASA is
grateful to all people and parties for this program to be materialized for past
33 years.
Past
Awardees
Since 2003 RASA has released profiles of awardees,
as follows. While most of them are written in Japanese, some of awardees wrote a
profile in English:
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