5 July 2025,
From June 23 to July 5, 2025, Ms. Kumiko Hayashi, Director in charge of Development Cooperation, International Cooperation Division, OISCA Headquarters, together with Mr. Akio Chikuda, Deputy Director of Chubu-Nippon Training Center (who stayed only up to June 28), paid a visit to Bangladesh for inspecting OISCA Bangladesh Training Center and related facilities. This visit was made possible through the invitation of Mr. Tatsuo Kosugi, OISCA Resident Representative in Bangladesh.
In 1971, Bangladesh got independent from Pakistan, and country urgently needed human resources development. OISCA started accepting Bangladesh trainees for training in Japan. Strongly moved by the enthusiasm of the Bangladesh trainees after returning from Japan to do their best for their home country, OISCA members of Aichi Prefecture provided financial support, and a group of former trainees established in 1981 a training center at a village in the suburbs of Dhaka. The OISCA activities in Bangladesh comprise 3 main projects: capacity building at the training center near Dhaka, mangrove reforestation and Children’s Forest Program (CFP).
About 40 years have already passed since the training program implemented, the training center has produced many alumni of trainees. The mangrove project which has been underway in the Chittagong Division in the southeast, has created a long and large green corridor along the canal that serves as a green breakwater, serving as a preparation for natural disasters such as cyclones. In addition, from 2019, mangroves have also begun to be planted in the Western Khulna Division near the border with India.
In the past, the Bangladesh Training Center had many trainees enrolled and actively sent trainees to Japan, but currently, its activities are scaling back, and trainees are accepted only at the Chubu-Nippon Training Center.
At the training center, young agricultural successors selected from applicants nationwide were engaged in training in various fields, including rice cultivation and vegetable cultivation using non-organic farming methods without pesticides, as well as poultry farming, livestock farming, and agricultural machinery operation and repair techniques.
Besides, the OISCA senior management staff visited the Women’s Training Center located adjacent to the Bangladesh Training Center which is currently operated by the government. In the Women’s Training Center, 46 female trainees were undergoing training in four courses (computers, mushroom cultivation, baking and confectionery, and sewing.
The training period there is three months.
In the Children’s Forest Program (CFP), as of the end of March 2025, a total of 242 schools were participating nationwide. In FY 2024, 700 trees were planted over 0.44 hectares with the cumulative total of trees reaching 92,538 and the cumulative area planted 73.11 hectares, respectively, since 1991.
The visiting OISCA senior staff visited 2 schools participating in CFP. They were impressed by the diligent efforts of the teachers concerned. The streets were littered with trash, but in schools, trash cans were installed and education on the prohibition of littering was conducted.
30 years ago
