The European Festivals Association (EFA) has been nominated “Arts Organisation of the Month” by the Performing Arts Network Japan. EFA was portrayed on the Japanese organisation’s website, a project of the Japan Foundation. The initiative "Arts Organization of the Month" was launched in 2004; so far, 52 organisations including EFA have been nominated due to their support of performing arts by offering information, financing and/or networking possibilities or by promoting international exchange through performing arts etc. Previous nominees include the Association of Asian Performing Arts Festivals (AAPAF), the International Society for Performing Arts (ISPA), the British Council, the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), the Australia Council for the Arts and the Informal European Theatre Meetings (IETM). For EFA the nomination means an important contribution to the furthering of relationships with Asia, Asian cultural organisations and festivals. Presently, EFA counts 110 member festivals, national festivals associations and cultural organisations from about 40 countries. Founded in 1952, today, EFA’s membership reaches beyond European borders: members come from the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Israel, Mexico, South Korea and Japan, with Japan represented by the Osaka International Festival. Over the past five years, EFA has developed close partnerships with Asian festivals and organisation, such as the Association of Asian Performing Arts Festivals (AAPAF), a sister organisation of EFA. One of the youngest members of the Association is the Music Isle Festival in Jeju (member since 2009). A recent EFA delegation attended the 11th China Shanghai International Arts Festival (CSIAF) and the 11th China Shanghai International Performing Arts Fair (SPAF). The Performing Arts Network Japan is a website that has been launched in order to foster mutual understanding and exchange through performing arts, to introduce foreign organisations to Japanese performing arts and to disseminate information about the stimulating and highly diverse Japanese performing arts scene. The Japan Foundation is an organisation for international cultural exchange and it carries out a broad variety of cultural-exchange programmes with personnel exchanges as their basic premise, ranging from such academic pursuits as Japanese studies and Japanese-language education to the arts, publication, audio-visual media sports and general life culture.