TOMODACHI Alumni Highlight: Keegan Rapp, from TOMODACHI Next Generation Summit 2024
This month’s alumni highlight features Keegan Rapp, who delivered an inspiring speech at the TOMODACHI Next Generation Summit 2024. Keegan is an alumnus of the 2020 TOMODACHI Generation: Morgan Stanley Ambassadors Program, a collaboration with The Washington Center in Washington, D.C. A 2021 graduate of Queens University of Charlotte, Keegan furthered his commitment to service by joining AmeriCorps in Colorado, working with Habitat for Humanity. He teaches English in Kagoshima City as an Assistant Language Teacher through the JET Program. In the near future, he plans to return to the U.S. to pursue a Master’s in Public Administration, focusing on community and economic development, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In the spring of 2020, I made the most consequential decision of my career, submitting my application to the Building the TOMODACHI Generation: Morgan Stanley Ambassadors Program. At 9:30 pm in my Washington D.C apartment, I was more concerned about packing tomorrow’s lunch for my internship. Coming from a small town in North Carolina, I was lucky to be in D.C, but coming to Japan, sounded impossible. But working with Japanese students, that sounded awesome.
The Building the Tomodachi Generation or BTG program is an amazing two-week program in D.C. including a pitch competition. Groups of mixed American and Japanese students compete to solve social issues in Japan. We learned Japanese and American civil society, partnerships, and business culture. Our team created “Project IMPACT”, a cross-sector junior high school ethics and career program to reduce school truancy or Futoko from the March 11th disaster. Despite our team being the last group to agree on a topic, we won 1st place. Since then, every step has been TOMODACHI.
The mentors we met through the TOMODACHI program showed us AmeriCorps, a US program where, after graduation, I built houses with Habitat for Humanity. They showed us JET. Where now, I am a second-year JET ALT in Kagoshima, impacting almost 2,000 students. One year before JET, we used the same competition techniques from the Building the TOMODACHI Generation: Morgan Stanley Ambassadors Program in Granville, North Carolina. Our winning high school students created a campaign to end social media and drug abuse at school. For the first time these students felt empowered and listened to. That is why programs like TOMODACHI are essential. Youth have voices, but there is often no opportunity to speak.
That’s why next year, I am starting my Master of Public Administration at UNC Chapel Hill to continue building youth opportunities to connect rural governments like Granville with rural places in Japan. None of this impact would have happened without Tomodachi. Not the Colorado teachers who needed affordable housing, not these 2,000 students in Kagoshima, not these high schoolers in Granville. You can see what two weeks of Tomodachi did for me; what can your TOMO voice do for others?
If we continue to demonstrate our brilliance as we did today, there is nothing our voices can’t do. So, private, public, NGO, TOMODACHI Alumni, I challenge you– let’s use our voices to spread opportunity to others.
This Alumni Highlight was written by Aiko Casas Ishii, an intern with the TOMODACHI program.
