WAPES-Japan Joint Project reaches milestone at WAPES Asia Pacific Regional Conference 2025, Clark City, Philippines (November 6th)
Cambodia, Japan, and the Philippines shared their efforts since 2019 through the WAPES- Japan Joint Project, emphasizing the importance of exchanging good practices and fostering peer-learning to enhance PES throughout the Asia Pacific.
On November 6, representatives of the WAPES-Japan Joint Project from three countries’ PES – NEA (Cambodia), MHLW (Japan), and DOLE (the Philippines)- were honored to have the opportunity to share their accumulated outcomes and good practices with over a hundred attendees from both local and international backgrounds.
In the WAPES-Japan Joint Project featured session, moderated by Minako TAKASAKI, Project Coordinator of the WAPES Executive Secretariat, three speakers highlighted the following points:
The highlights of the inspiring exchange
- Ms. TAKASAKI, de WAPES, pointed out the outline of the project and its framework. She emphasized the effectiveness of the meaningful cross-border collaborative activities based on WAPES bench-learning methodology, specifically benchmarking and peer-learning
- Ms. Rattana KEO, Director of the Planning and Cooperation Unit at the National Employment Agency (NEA) in Cambodiame Rattana KEO, presented on ‘WAPES Joint Project – Best Practices from Cambodia.’ She shared NEA’s significant efforts to develop two self-assessment tools (Performance Assessment Framework and Customer Satisfaction Survey) and implement them in a pilot. She also offered her insights and future challenges based on her direct involvement in the project.
- Mr. Shota Otake, an officer in the Employment Policy Division at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) in Japan, shared best practices from the “Hello Work System.” This nationwide digital network is designed to implement a wide range of public employment services (PES) effectively and collectively, while maintaining a consistent quality of service. He also introduced a general occupational information website that primarily targets young job seekers.
- Ms. Sheila Merl Q. Lantaca, a Senior Labor and Employment Officer in the Program Management Division at the Bureau of Local Employment (BLE), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in the Philippines, focused on DOLE’s comprehensive strategy to improve PESO, known as the ‘PESO five-point agenda’. She also emphasized the importance of the current joint project in promoting this agenda and outlined her expectations for leveraging the project’s outcome.
This featured session concluded the discussion on future expectations and possibilities of utilizing the outcome for two projects targeting Cambodia and the Philippines.
The results of the two projects will be published in reports and shared with all WAPES members in order to promote good practices and enhance synergy among members in 2026.
Additionally, as part of the Joint Project activity, we invited non-WAPES members from the Asia-Pacific region – Indonesia, India, Lao P.D.R., Brunei Darussalam, and Taiwan- to promote their understanding of our actual activities through physical or virtual attendance at the conference. We will continue to discuss their future involvement and encourage collaboration with prospective new WAPES members to expand our information-sharing network.
