Japanese Language Instructors to Train Teachers in Indian Schools

New Delhi, May 28 (UNI) Japan resumed providing its overseas volunteer experts to India to promote socio-economic projects and developmental activities.

The first of such volunteers, Ms Kaori Hirose, a Japanese language instructor, today began training Indian high school teachers at the Delhi Public School, R K Puram, in the capital. Ms Kaori, during her 10 month assignment, made available by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), would train 11 Japanese language teachers of the Delhi Public School Society.

Japanese is an important foreign language for school students in Indian cities. The demand for professionals with knowledge of Japanese is on the rise in India's education, tourism and information technology sectors. JICA will provide some more language instructors this year under the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) to the Pune University and the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, and the Viswabharati University, West Bengal.

Under the same programme, Judo instructors will also be provided this year to the Judo Federation of India to train Indian amateurs.

Japanese experts volunteer programme would be extended to other areas like agriculture, silk farming and industrial electronics.

Japan is resuming its JOCV programme to India after a gap of 28 years. The programme become inactive in the shadow of Cold War politics. Between 1966 and 1978, when the JOCV programme was active in India, 131 such volunteers had served in the country.

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