不自由なく学べる教育環境を！山口朝鮮初中級学校65周年プロジェクト

▼Introduction

 

 Hello！　
 We are the teachers working in Yamaguchi Korean School in Japan. We are celebrating the 65th anniversary of our school foundation　this year. In commemoration of this special year, we launched a crowd funding effort in order to provide the students with a comfortable studying environment: air conditioned-classroom for the summer.  
 Our school is located in Yamaguchi prefecture, the westernmost part of the main island in Japan. Once, there used to be five Korean schools in Yamaguchi prefecture.  Unfortunately, the other 4 schools were closed due to a decreasing number of Korean children and political problems surrounding Korean peninsula. In 2008, the Shimonoseki Korean school and the Ube Korean school were unified and named as “Yamaguchi Korean School”, reestablishing itself as a unique Korean school in this prefecture. 
 Our school currently has a small number of students-1 kindergartener, 16 elementary school students, and 4 junior high school students. There are 9 teachers and 3 part-time workers in the school. 

 

    

 

▼About Korean schools in Japan

 

 Do you know Korean schools in Japan?
 There are 66 Korean schools in Japan from Hokkaido to Kyusyu. While each school has a small number of students, these schools are affiliated to each other. The teachers have strong ties, so when the schools were closed all at once due to the corona disaster last year, teachers shared the responsibility and quickly sent online classes to the students all over the Korean schools.
 Students who attend Korean schools have different nationalities: DPR Korea, Republic of Korea, Japan, etc. Most of them were born and raised in Japan. We teach Korean language, culture, and history to help our students achieve their self-identity as a Korean. They are taught all three languages - Korean, Japanese and English. Of course, they learn math, science, history and geography of Japan and the world so that they can be a bridge between Japan and Korea.

 

 

▼Motivation of the project

 We hope to improve the educational environment in our school！
 Our school building is getting old: the three-storied building of our school was built 25 years ago, two-storied building was built 59 years ago and the gym was built 35 years ago. 
 We need quite a few repairs of the buildings. However, it’s impossible because of the financial problem. Air conditioned-rooms are therefore out of the question! You can easily understand it’s quite difficult for us to manage our school with only tuition fee of a few students. 
 Yamaguchi prefecture and Shimonoseki city had supplied official aids: 50,000 yen per a student annually since 1995. But it was suddenly stopped in 2013. Why? The Japanese government introduced “tuition free high school system”, which included international schools but excluded Korean schools because of political reasons having nothing to do with education. This　decision, unbelievably, caused even the local government to stop providing our school with subsidy. 
 We were at a loss and wondered how we could run our school.   
 Some Japanese citizens felt sorry and then organized the group named “Yamaguchi network for supporting the Korean school”.    
 With their help over the past 8 years, we have tried to bring back the subsidy but it has not been realized yet. 
 We managed to run our school thanks to donation by Korean people living in Yamaguchi, graduates of our school and Japanese supporters. However, due to the Coronavirus crisis, the amount of donations has decreased.
 In spite of such a harsh reality, we think that we need to improve the learning environment at school. 

 

   

 

 Do you know summer in Japan is extremely hot and humid?
 In July the temperature in classroom can rise up to over 35℃ (95°F). According to Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 93% of elementary and junior high schools in Japan have air conditioned rooms. However, we don’t. Using fans are still unbearable for the students. So, students often wash their faces to cool down. To make matters worse, everyone always must wear mask to prevent Coronavirus, which makes the students suffer from the heat more. 

 

 

  We must save the students from the heatstroke. We must save them from the Coronavirus as well. We want all the students to spend school life happily and comfortably! From this point of view, we want to provide our students with air conditioned-classrooms as soon as possible!  
 We want you to understand our project and join us.

 

▼Target of the project

 Our target of this project is to Install an air conditioner in all classrooms.

 The total cost will be ¥4,260,700 including equipment and facilities. Happily, installation fee has been donated and installation pre-work has already completed. Therefore, we are going to collect the insufficient amount of  ¥2,300,000 in order to get the air conditioners for this project. We are planning to collect funds online and offline. If we were to raise more than expected, we would use the extra funds to repair rain leaks in the roof and so on.
We hope that this project inspires all students, parents and Japanese supporters to continue celebrating our 70th anniversary, 80th anniversary and beyond. 

 

▼Project vision

 Our school soccer team had practiced with the Japanese school soccer team for many years.  Our teachers went teaching Korean language to the Japanese school teachers.  Our school students were also invited to neighboring Japanese school to watch their school concert.  We were very glad to hear that the Japanese school principal phrased,” Korean school children are very polite!”
Thus, we had deepened a friendship between neighboring Japanese schools before Covid-19 occurred. 
 We were sure that having constant interactions are very important to recognize our differences and respect others as they are. We will make our school more open and be the closest spot for international exchange.
 We believe that the success of this project will be a good opportunity to inform our Korean school to more people. 
 In addition, it will encourage Korean students in Japan who will play an important role to be a bridge between Korea and Japan and create bright societies for both countries in the future.
 Thank you. 

 

 

➤Payment from overseas 

 1. Only a credit card must be used.  A bank transfer can’t be accepted.
（JCB／Master／VISA／American Express／Diners）

　

 

2. Please write your name and postal code for your address.

 

3. Write your address