A Project Ibunka Online Symposium took place on Saturday, June 25
Organizer:
Masahito Watanabe, Yokohama National University
Participants:
Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine
Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland
University of Pamploa, Colombia
SMA Plus PGRI Cibinong, Indonesia
Universidade Tecnologica Federal do Parana, Brazil
New Taipei San-Chung Commercial and Industrial Vocational High School, Taiwan
University of Oulu, Finland
Seoil University, South Korea
Yokohama National University, Japan
An intercultural exchange project, Ibunka has been organized by Masahito Watanabe from Yokohama National University for more than twenty years. “Ibunka” means “different cultures” in Japanese. This is a web-based bulletin board discussion in English among English learners from various countries.
Since 2000, more than 7,300 students from different countries have participated in the project. Last year, in 2021, from Sep. 27 to Dec. 23, 263 high school and university students from Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Japan, joined the project and exchanged 2,046 written messages on the boards.
One of the goals of Project Ibunka is to enhance English learners’ cross-cultural awareness and promote world peace.
In 2022 during the Ibunka Online Symposium two students Alona Kostenko and Alina Oger from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute under the guidance of Prof. Iryna Simkova delivered a presentation “Challenges and opportunities of studying for Ukrainian students during the war”.
