There are 4 weeks left for the beginning of the SEED Program 2023 Study Tour in Japan! Because of this, we interviewed each group leader to know more about the current status of their projects and their expectations about the study tour in December. Let’s get to know them!
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C: Please introduce yourselves.
Benjamín: Hi everyone. My name is Benjamín Vélez. I’m a 9th semester Economics student at the EAFIT University in Medellin, Colombia, and I’m the team leader for the wine team.
Anahí: I’m Anahí Zucchi, I’m from Argentina, I’m from Austral University and I’m in the career of Public Accountant and I belong to the jewelry group.
Maraya: Hi, I’m Mayara Lana. I’m from Brazil. In FAAP University, I am majoring in Cinema and Animation and I am in my third year and I graduate next year. And I’m the team leader of the textile group.
Pedro: Hello, my name is Pedro. I’m 22 years old. I’m currently finishing my major of International Relations in the last semester. So besides doing the project with Gorom Association, I’m also working and finishing my master’s thesis. That’s why this is a busy semester for me. I am currently studying at FAAP, which is a college at Sao Paulo City in Brazil, and I’m the team leader of the sake group.
C: Could you tell us how your projects are currently going?
Benjamín: Regarding the project we’re currently working on, we just finished the document for the project. We’re currently starting to organize the public pitch presentation that we’re going to give in Japan to our client, which is the one producer from the winery, Lorian. We’re starting to organize the recommendations that we have for them, mostly what the producer wanted to know was to understand how the Latin American market works, what is the current state, and especially if the labels that they are currently using are appealing to Colombian, Brazilian and Argentinian producers, which is why we did some studies, not only by implementing surveys, but also with other methodologies such as the implementation of a focus group using a guest chamber. So we’re currently organizing all the information to present in Japan.
Anahí: Now we are finishing the Research Paper, which is the most important part of the work, so until now we have been basically investigating the Colombian, Brazilian and Argentinian markets, and now we are making a business strategy focused on making Yamanashi known in Argentina and also promote the sale of jewelry and tourism.
Mayara: So our group is the first textile group, so it is a new experience and we are developing many requests from the company that we are working with and we have had many great responses for our service, so we are very be hoping to make great difference for this company and improve in many ways that they are not familiar yet, so I think it’s going to be really great to work with them. We did finish our surveys and we have had many analyses that had great answers to help them in the future.
Pedro: Our project is doing really good. We are just finishing our last part about the final details of our public pitch. We already did our research paper for the sake producer. I think we managed to get together some interesting data about how sake is known and consumed in Latin America, especially in Brazil, since Brazil has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan. We have a lot of valuable information both in data and in social aspects of life that will certainly help our producer to know more about how the sake culture works in Brazil and in Latin America. Well, in a few weeks we’ll be in Japan and we are pretty much just finishing your project, just waiting for our trip to Japan and presenting it to the producer!
C: Thank you! Finally, what expectations do you have about the Study Tour in December?
Benjamín: So for the expectations that I have about the study tour, I’m pretty excited, to be honest! I’m happy to finally meet everyone in person. I really want to get to know a lot of the places from Japan. I’ve been to Japan before. I lived there for some time, but I’ve never been to Yamanashi before and I’ve seen some videos on the Internet. What I’ve seen is really beautiful. It’s actually the place where you see all the publicities from Japan with Mount Fuji in the back and the beautiful old building. And so not only I’m looking forward to doing some tourism, when the program finishes, but during the program I’m looking forward to working with everyone to give the presentation and as well to be able to go to a lot of different institutions that we know that I know that we’re going to go to.
Anahí: In my case, this is going to be the first time I go to Japan, and also one of the first times traveling alone, so it will be an interesting experience! I expect to see a lot of what is the culture of Japan, also visit important places and beyond that, I am also very interested in finally meeting the producers in person.
Mayara: Since my major is not actually related to entrepreneurship and it’s more about art, in my college we do a lot of communication and we hope to learn a lot about it. I’m really excited to have this experience, because it is a path that I really want to continue working. Having this experience can really benefit me and all members of my group, because we have lots of different majors working from this first textile group, and I am hoping to provide a lot from my major to everyone and hoping to work with many ways to like entrepreneurship in the future again.
Pedro: Well, I have great expectations about this trip in December to Japan! I think it will be very enriching. Of course, I am the team leader of the sake group and my main thing will be about the sake producer. But I also know that all of the students are going to meet the jewelry producer, the sake producer, the wine producer, and the textiles producer, so we are going to have a really wide view of those traditional products from Yamanashi region. We are also going to visit Tokyo and see some ministries. We do not know about the specifics yet, but we are going to be privileged and see a lot about about the political and economical structure of the Japanese government and I think that, you know, with all of these programs that we’re going to have in two weeks in Japan, we all are going to enjoy a lot and learn a lot from all of the programs in this field trip.
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We are also looking forward to finally meeting everyone in person here in Japan! We hope that this experience can enrich your academic and work paths and also that it allows us to keep creating lasting bonds between Latin America and Japan.
Please keep in touch to get to know all the updates about the SEED Program 2023!
