International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences "IATSS FORUM" Leadership Training Program in Japan For Young Professionals in ASEAN countries

This is the second time for me to explore in Japan, and I am sure this is going to be an amazing one which I could acquire more knowledge, skill, and experience from the lecture, discussion, and field study. From the course syllabus, I think the fellows in this program will be able to learn more from the Japanese context and how the development in this country is energized, which surpasses my expectations. Among all, I hope to learn more on how the sustainability can be shaped and how the richness of Japanese culture with its current technology is linked to its societal and economic development. I am keen to know how Japanese lifestyle is changed and their business is reaching the global level, regarding to the new social trend, innovation, and development of ICT. It is important to know and learn more from the fellows coming from ASEAN and see how we can interact and share to each other in term of social and economic context and our culture mutual understanding. It must be an opportunity for us to reflect back to what we can learn from Japan and what we can jointly take action after this program. I expect to interact well with the other fellows through teamwork and participation, despites our differences and fear of diversity. I believe we can work hard together; fight for our good insights; learn from the experts in the social and business environment of Japan, ASEAN, and the global; exchange for improvement, and connect well with each other. Hopefully, we can take out of the best and join idea to create positive impacts afterward.

Having an opportunity to be in Japan is precious, and learning from IATSS Forum is more than a blessing. Despites my second time in Japan, the experience I have received from this forum does exceed beyond my expectation. This time the context is quite different; yet, I realize the lessons learnt in this program has become a strong basement for me to move my future forward both academically and professionally.
First, I love how this program is designed to equip the participants with the concrete knowledge of sustainability and a practical experience by witnessing all the main aspects at certain key corners and talking about the matters with the experts in the focused fields. From these theoretical and practical demonstrations, we also had a chance to put everything into the real context by designing a sustainable community, which one particular issue was chosen to be tackled through the team’s initiative at that certain location. We had time to reflect what we have learned into the reality with the team synergy. Meanwhile, leadership skill, which is the core part of this training, has been sharpened into the participants’ real life as the experiential lessons that everyone learnt it from practical interaction, solving problems, team working, observing, and facilitating in the way the common goals can be achieved, and the working outcome benefits the team project quality. It is spiritually and gradually absorbed, and it has become our unforgettable bittersweet memory that everyone would bring to their reality back home, and this is going to be one of our memorable life experiences which will shape our self-esteem and confidence in achieving our dreams. Moreover, we crucially learn how to maintain high level of faith and positivity in life and survive emotionally during the challenges. In this case, the value of friendship is very uniquely priceless, which is a tasty life flavor.
To me, this lifetime opportunity is one of the most wonderful learning milestones that our capacity is enhanced to challenge in diversity context by revealing one’s potential, bridging the gap of differences, and maintaining mutual understanding with a high sense of forgiving and commitment. Let’s “Dream, Act, Grow” forever embedded in our spirit!
However, after this program, I am really inspired to bring a thought of positive changes, and from this, I am working with the other mates having the same interest to create a social project, which aims to empower youth’s roles in revitalize our nations’ culture for a sustainability. This project will allow the young people to challenge themselves in a project competition and practically implement their projects in a province in Cambodia through the grants of the private sectors right after the competition. This project will promote awareness of the young generation in seeking for the hidden treasures in assigned location so that they can learn about their culture as well as local resources and will eager to use their initiatives to help revitalize the existing heritage left from our ancestors and empower the local people’s living condition and the community bond through effectively mobilizing those local resources. We believe this will benefit the local community in a foremost way, and this could be a good model to promote unrevealing legacy of that local context which is a part to also promote One Village One Product movement in Cambodia. Hopefully, this dream of mine will be actualized soon in my home country.
Dream well, Believe more, Work hard, Achieve better!