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Frequently Asked Questions  What
kind of activities have the coordinators done to date?With the help of coordinators, a list of activities is attached. No one coordinator did all of these activities Nor did any coordinator limit him or herself to only one of the categories. Each coordinator performs the myriad tasks needed at individual sites. The JOI program recognizes that each site is different. As you can see from a glance, there is a great deal of breadth in the type of activities that are possible. Of course, coordinators are not limited to the activities on this list. The supervisor and coordinator might produce another fifteen activities that have not even been thought of yet! Click here for the list of activities. Do
you have any suggestions about how to secure housing?Please uunderstand that The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership has been very generous in their support of this program and feels that the site should provide some commitment beyond office space and supervising. Since JOI is not administered out of your community, it seems natural to request the hosting site to be responsible for housing. The $750 monthly stipend that the coordinator receives does not go very far if he or she needs to pay for housing. If you or your board cannot provide university or apartment housing because of the financial burden to your organization, that is completely understandable. This is why host families are a possible option. Although the coordinator will be with the site for two years, the host family does not need to commit to two years. The strategy that seems to work for others is to ask a family to commit to one semester or through the end of December. Letting the host family know that you will revisit this issue with them just before Thanksgiving to ask them if they are able to continue hosting or if the coordinator will need to move to another host family seems to reassure the families. In past programs, when this strategy was used, most host families decided to continue hosting for the year. This strategy seemed to make it easier to approach potential host families and to gain a commitment, especially if the families felt that they had an 'out' at the end of the semester. Some suggestions on ways to approach the search might be to ask university faculty and staff, K-12 teachers, churches, K-12 Japanese language students' families, friends of board members, martial arts schools, parents of your children's friends/soccer teams/ballet schools or other after school activities in which your own children might be involved, doctors, lawyers, accountants (one previous program participant asked a few major law and accounting firms to post a flyer about the program and hosting request in their break rooms), library bulletin boards. Some Junior Leagues or Garden Clubs may be approached to take this on as a project. The consulate may be able to provide a list of JET alumni in your area and have this as one of their projects. The Chamber of Commerce could be asked to mention the search in one of their newsletters. In other words, enlist community members to help. All of the groups mentioned have the potential of benefiting from having a coordinator in their community. The coordinator will be going into schools, perhaps assisting with translating for the economic development office, giving talks to the Garden Club, business groups, etc. You do not have to find the host family all by yourself! This page is intended for 'veteran' supervisors to share their thoughts about housing for coordinators with upcoming supervisors. One JOI requirement is that sites assume the cost of housing. This is usually in the form of host families, which often change three or four times a year, or on-campus housing. Only rarely do sites house coordinators in their own apartments. There is a housing stipend of $200 a month to help defray the cost of utilities and basic food. If the site assigns the coordinator to housing, but the coordinator prefers a more independent housing situation, then the cost of that housing is up to the coordinator. The messages below are from supervisors themselves. Asia Center, University of Georgia: Initially, I thought that housing would be easy. The University of Georgia has limited short-term faculty housing that costs $650 a month for only four months. Our Center cannot pay for such housing with state money, however. I contacted individuals I knew or had heard of who had access to other individuals who have kept foreign students before. That led to many dead ends. There were promises but when those who had room in their house learned the particular stipulations (at the time only $200 for food and nothing else for the landlord) they backed out or showed deep reluctance. Eventually, a mass e-mail to all the Center for Asian Studies faculty produced one lonely but quite upfront volunteer. He has a big house and is German by birth. A professor focusing on termites, he often travels to Japan and elsewhere in Asia where he lectures and offers advice about his research. He offered to keep Hijiri, our JOI coordinator, the entire two years!!! Every time I talk with him he seems extremely pleased that she is living in his house and I have heard no complaints only praise. We lucked out but it was a rough few months before I found him. I suggest that you try all possible avenues and have a backup plan. (Farley Richmond, University of Georgia JOI Supervisor) East Asian Languages and Cultures, Wake Forest University: Finding the housing for two years seemed to be a huge challenge because I knew our department couldn't give full support. So, I contacted a lot of people in various departments and administrators who I knew had an interest in Japanese Studies. I also sent out a letter to the Japanese Business Association in our area. Luckily, the Provost's Office promised to give us funding to offset the housing cost. They also encouraged me to apply for an internal grant, which I was fortunate to receive. I guess my suggestion is the same that Farley gave above - contact as many people and organizations as you can think of. In my case, I didn't expect the Provost's Office to provide the financial support so quickly. It doesn't hurt to ask! (Yasuko Rallings, Wake Forest University JOI Supervisor ) Asia Center, University of Kentucky: We did not have any free or subsidized housing on campus to bring to the program, plus the prospect of the Coordinator being alone in a university apartment was not appealing. So I talked with the International Student Services (ISS) unit and the International Affairs Community Liaison for their ideas. I also asked our Japan America Society to advise me about their members who might be a host. But right away ISS received an ad from a widow wanting to share her house with a Japanese graduate student; she had done this before. I met with her, explained our situation and she was willing to be the host for an undetermined length of time. She was a great host mother for the first year, but was considering a move and asked to be relieved by the end of May. This past spring I followed the same methods I used for the first year, and called on local people who had hosted international students before (contacts I received from our Community Liaison.) One woman agreed to put an announcement in her church newsletter and two people came forward as potential hosts. We went with the one who had more flexibility (no particular end-date.) so that Keiko could potentially stay there the whole year. Again, this is an "empty-nester" type of person- that seems to have been the ideal host for us. (Shana Herron, UK JOI Supervisor) How do coordinators make friends?One of the challenges coordinators face, especially during their first few months, is making friends in a new environment. Different from students, they are working adults who find it difficult to meet other working adults with whom to spend time during their spare time and weekends. The secret is not to wait for others to approach you, but for you to actively interact with others.Below are some suggestions from JOI staff as well as past and current coordinators:
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