Reports

This is a training course in Japan titled “Promotion of Community-Led Activities Utilizing Local Resources and Public-Private Collaboration,” conducted as part of the activities of the JICA technical cooperation project being implemented in Bhutan between March 2023 and February 2027: the Project for Promoting Inclusive Participation Leveraging Community Engagement Platform (CEP).

This project was planned with a strong desire to enable as many international students as possible to visit the Kansai Expo. We decided to create opportunities not only to visit the Expo, but also to leverage PREX’s strengths—its connections with local authorities in the Kansai region and economic organizations—so that participants can learn about Japan beyond the university campus. The themes of the program were as follows:
1. To learn about dynamic Japanese Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)
2. To learn about the new added value, such as business and human rights, that these SMEs are pursuing
To address these themes, the program consisted of four sessions: a pre-study session, company visits, a visit to the Expo, and a debriefing session.

A Training Course Was Held for Participants from Central Asian Countries to Experience Industry–Academia–Government–Finance Collaboration and to Apply It in Practice.

This training course is designed for government officials and equivalent professionals responsible for investment promotion and/or business environment reform. It aims to provide participants with essential basic knowledge and analytical skills to advance such initiatives in their home countries. The course also deepens understanding through company visits and discussions with businesses engaged in investment, and strengthens participants’ capacity for practical action through the development of action plans.

This course was attended by nine participants from four countries: Kyrgyz, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan. This four-day program was designed to help participants deepen their understanding through talks by guest speakers from SME support organizations, financial institutions, company owners, and company representatives in Japan, as well as through on-site visits and opinion exchange.

Government and public agency staff involved in export promotion activities, and executives from private organizations engaged in export promotion participated in this training course. To address their challenges, participants objectively evaluated the strengths and characteristics of products from their own countries based on data, after understanding the needs of the global market. They also studied and examined marketing and promotion methods to develop, export, and sell products for target markets from a market-oriented perspective.

This training program was designed to clarify the challenges facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to strengthen their capacity to formulate effective promotion policies. A total of 11 participants took part in the program, including officials from central ministries and agencies, local government administrators, and members of other public support organizations such as chamber of commerce. In Tokyo, participants attended lectures on policy planning, while in the Kansai region they learned about local-level measures and observed on-site business support activities.

This training course was designed for government officials responsible for agricultural guidance and/or extension in African or Asian countries. Through lectures and on-site visits, participants learned about Japan’s agricultural guidance and extension system as well as its market distribution system. The course aimed to deepen participants’ understanding of the Market-Oriented Agricultural Extension/Promotion approach targeting small-scale farmers (the SHEP Approach*), enabling them to prepare action plans and implement related activities in their own countries based on those plans.

This training course is an original program conducted by PREX. It is designed for Vietnamese employees working in Japanese companies, with the aim of nurturing future leaders who will play central roles in their organizations. Participants deepened their knowledge through lectures, company visits, and practical exercises on themes such as management philosophy, kaizen, organizational management, and human resource development. On the final day, participants presented action plans based on what they had learned.

In this past six months, we started running “PGN Cafe.” The name of this event is “Cafe,” but as you can guess, it’s not a real cafe. Rather, it’s an exchange room we’ve opened using Zoom.