2024 APCC Junior Ambassadors Prepare for Fukuoka

Our four Asian-Pacific Children’s Convention (APCC) Junior Ambassadors (JAs), chaperone Wendy Lum, and Peace Ambassador Joanna Sato have kept themselves busy since this March preparing for their trip to Fukuoka, Japan! They met every month at the JASH Office to learn about Japanese food, culture, daily life, homestay expectations, and the world outside of Hawaii. These preparatory workshops, led by JASH, included a scavenger food hunt at Don Quijote; charity walk; hula and oli practice; a weekend of team-building activities at YMCA Camp Erdman; and other hands-on activities!

Kendall presenting on religion in the Maldives

For each workshop, JAs prepared  “Cross-Cultural Reports” to share about the different countries and regions participating in this year’s APCC. They taught their peers in the Republic of the Maldives; Kingdom of Thailand; Republic of the Philippines; Australia; and many more, altogether exploring 16 new cultures. As part of this assignment, JAs were also challenged to compare their findings to their own culture and daily life here in Hawaii. Although they were familiar with certain aspects of Pacific and East Asian culture, there were a lot of new discoveries through this assignment. Now, they couldn’t wait to meet their peers in Fukuoka to learn about the countries and their cultures they studied.

Our JAs also started preparing for the “We are the BRIDGE Festival 2024” very early this year. During the weekend at Camp Erdman, they practiced a Hawaiian chant called, “Oli Mahalo” and danced hula to a lovely song called, “Ulupalakua”. The chaperone encouraged JAs to understand the meaning of the chant and lyrics when performing and to introduce Hawaii’s rich culture and tradition to the world as a representative of Hawaii.

(L-R) JAs practicing hula performance with a chaperone Wendy Lum at Camp Erdman (photo by JASH NexGen and camp chaperone Sean Takehara)

As a creative project, JAs have created a scrapbook and will take it with them to Japan to share with host families and friends. This year, JAs binded five pages about assigned themes: "All About Me," "My Family," "Where I Live,"  "My School" and "My Dreams".  JAs enjoyed making a collage using text, photos, drawings, and cut up magazines, and also enjoyed sharing it with other JAs and getting to know more about each other during the workshop.  

(L-R) Kendall, Matthew, Jonah, and Lily sharinging their scrapbook pages at Camp Erdman (photo by JASH NexGen and camp chaperone Sean Takehara)

APCC is a team project of current and previous JAs, their families and friends, and the JASH community, which plays an important role in creating a pipeline of our education programs.

JAs, chaperone, their families and friends participated in the Charity Walk as team JASH

JASH is honored to have served as the Liaison Office for the Hawaii delegation since 2003. If you wish to know more about the APCC program, please visit the JASH website at jashawaii.org/apcc or contact Educational Programs Coordinator Eiko Ushida at eushida@jashawaii.org.