Looking back at 10 years of MSA
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Cover photo: An MSA Birthday Cake - Actually from our 2018 Birthday Bash / AGM.
It’s unreal to think that MSA’s first event was more than 10 years ago.
Back then, it was 3 MEXT scholars and 1 alumni who met at a cafe in Shibuya in March 2016. With a problem statement that was so obvious, but that no one was doing something about.
“How come MEXT scholars and alumni don’t get to know each other?”
If you look closely, MEXT alumni are throughout the world. The MEXT scholarship has produced one former prime minister of a country (Montenegro), and multiple cabinet-level ministers in Southeast Asia, both currently and in the past.
But because no one records, no one knows. And because no one connects, we all live disparate lives.
No one benefits from this, not the scholar, nor Japan.
The impact
This is why on the 28th of April, 2016, the few starting co-founders booked an event space near Shibuya and did our kickoff meetup.
Around 20 people came - an achievement for a kick off event for a no-name organization.
I won’t bore you with the large parts of the history from then, from that very small start, we’ve grown, in both numbers and impact.
Some highlights since are,
- Being entrusted with the program of the MEXT welcome party and successfully handling this for every year of our existence (excluding COVID years).
- Organizing more than 30 online events and seminars during COVID - because not being able to gather shouldn’t mean breakage of community nor of information transfer.
- Growing to a total following of 20,000 across all platforms.
- Raising 1.5 million yen to help scholars with quarantine fees during COVID.
Sustainability
People often misunderstand this, but MSA is not funded by MEXT nor JASSO. In addition, for the first 8 years of our history, not a single person got paid for this. Even now, we only have two part-time helpers, but the core leadership is still unpaid.
Unlike many alumni organizations in the world, we also don’t charge membership fees. So, how have we kept the lights on?
It’s really the fact that
- Enough people have seen the value in our mission to volunteer their time.
- Enough organizations see the value in MEXT scholars and alumni to collaborate with us, which is how we secure our funding.
- MEXT scholars and alumni are capable enough to organize ourselves and deliver.
- And the sum of all this is the 10 years of activity and impact that we’ve had.
That’s not to say that everything has been smooth. COVID stopped in-person events, and particular regional activities, a situation we are only still slowly recovering from.
We also used to offer msajunction.com - our own alumni directory of sorts. But with the depreciating yen and the subscription that we were buying denominated in USD, we had no choice but to let it go.
(….but there may be something interesting coming on this front actually, stay tuned)
We grow, still, from now
But the fact that MSA is still here, after 10 years I think deserves a huge round of applause, for both the current team, all past team members, and anyone else who has helped us in any small way or form.
In these 10 years, the world has changed. Japan too has changed. But I believe that as long as the MEXT scholarship - and MEXT scholars and alumni - exists, MSA still will go strong and slowly fulfilling our mission.
That gap which I mentioned 10 years ago still exists. We will continue, slowly but surely fulfilling that gap which we set out to fill, 10 years ago.
Austin Zeng,
Co-Founder and current Director of MSA, President from 2018 - 2023
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