Abstract:

This presentation will assess the rural leaders training program conducted for 40 years by the Asian Rural Institute in northeastern Japan. This program is made up of nine-month training course and has to date trained more than 1000 persons from 56 nations. As the organization approached its 40th anniversary in 2013, a priority was made to do an assessment of both the organization and the program benefits, challenges and impacts.

This presentation and article will target these key areas:
1) An introduction to the organization’s program goals including social justice values relevant to community building: equality, participatory decision-making, sustainability, environmental stewardship, self-sufficiency, diversity, respecting differences, reconciliation, and empowerment of the marginalized.
2) A review of the guiding values and principles
- Servant leadership (leading by serving people)
- Foodlife (the cycle of food connected to all aspects of life)
- Community building (learning by sharing together as different but equal persons)
3) The development of the training over its 40 years of existence highlighting main changes and pillars of continuity.
4) The contents of the training that contribute to the key purposes of the training. Examples of workshops, hands-on learning and observation tours will show how participants experience for themselves the use of local resources, problem solving techniques, and the chance to see the negative impacts of development.
5) The key skills and learnings employed by graduates upon return to their communities
Impacts of graduates in their communities – this will include specific stories from the field showing graduates doing various types of work in agriculture, education, local leadership development, women's empowerment and microfinance. These individual stories are testimonies to how ARI’s curriculum leads to acceptance of change, diversity, equality and how the training promotes a change in philosophy and values.
6) What can be learned for replication in other training program.

Data sources and Research methods: The data for this article will come from an 18-month in depth study of more than 200 program participants, graduates and staff from the Asian Rural Institute (ARI). Data was gathered through interviews, surveys, site visits and report/material review.

Keywords:

Leadership, rural, valued based education, training, international, development, community building, transformation.