Trevor Gradin is our American winner this year, and is majoring in advertising with a minor in Japanese and Business, who is now studying at Toyo University through the ISEP exchange. He is a musician as well, and writes his own music and is deeply interested in Japanese music, and looks forward to sharing and performing while in Japan. And while there, he'll be joining up with a group to help with the tsunami and earthquake relief effort in the Sendai region.
Our Japanese winner, Jun Kawai, has come to research as a Fellow at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. Although he is a PhD student of Yokohama National University in Japan, his study is a joint research project between NASA and Japan. He's volunteering a few times a week to teach Japanese. That Volunteer Club is working with people from many countries, such as South Korea, Taiwan, India, USA, and Israel. He's teaching about Japanese culture and customs in addition to language studies.
Each year, hashi.org will be awarding three $1000 scholarships - one to a Japanese, one to a Korean, and one to an American. The schedule is as follows:
May 1st to June 15th — Application period for Japanese scholarship
July 1st — Japanese scholarship winner announced
July 1st to August 15th — Application period for American scholarship
September 1st — American scholarship winner announced
September 1st to October 15th — Application period for Korean scholarship
November 1st — Korean scholarship winner announced