Non - Profit organization asuiku / npo法人 アスイク

Form of Support 3 Child Support Organizations (Part 2) Yusuke Ohashi, representative director of NPO Asuiku. Hello, everyone. I am Ohashi, representative director of NPO Asuiku. I would like to introduce our organization. Our organization was founded on March 28, about 2 weeks after the quake. Having been damaged by the tsunami, some schools were no longer functioning. Others were flooded with evacuees and they weren't sure when they could move out. There was a risk that if such a situation continued, children would have no access to education, a basic service... ...for several months. In order to respond to the risk, an organization, Asuiku, was immediately established. Our initial plan was very simple. We planned to send would-be teacher students to evacuation centers as learning support staff... ...to provide children between elementary to high school age with academic support. At that time, however, because of severe food shortages... ...we were sent from one center to another and sometimes faced a harsh reaction from parents. Some children were indifferent to us although we tried to invite them to our activities. We felt anxiety that an activity like this might be unwanted. But we moved around, thinking that we couldn't remain at a standstill. On April 3, we held the first activity at Wakabayashi-ku gym. This picture shows that scene. As soon as children and support staff introduced themselves the activity started... ...children turned from bleak expressions to bright smiles. Looking at this scene, I was strongly convinced that this activity is really necessary. On this day, we brought reporters of Kahoku-Shimpo and other media along with us to cover the story. Consequently, our activities were picked up by many media outlets. It encouraged people to join us and companies to donate supplies. We gained a lot of support to boost our activities. This shows the achievements of our efforts from the April to June period. 59 operations were conducted at 9 evacuation centers in 4 cities and towns. In total, 308 support staff and 444 children participated. Specifically speaking, I think our operations were roughly broken down into 3 phases. The 1st phase lasted till the reopening of school, mainly in April. We focused on interacting with as many children as possible even if we could only do it once. Because our priorities were making children aware that they could study even at evacuation centers and... ...alleviating the anxiety of parents over the reopening of schools due to the spread of uncertain information... ...even though reopening had been decided. So we tried to interact with children and parents even though it might end up one-time thing. The 2nd phase is the period from leaving evacuation centers to entering temporary houses. We mainly focused on two things. Firstly, we introduced a leadership system. At every evacuation center, we chose a leader from the learning support staff... ...so that the leader could independently manage operations in the field. I coordinated leaders' meetings to share the problems and know-how for solutions. In this way, we created a kind of hierarchy to make the organization work efficiently. Another is a fixed support staff system, appointing support staff dedicated to each center. The more the life in evacuation centers drags on, the more pressure children feel. Under such a circumstance, they feel more relaxed to see familiar support staff than different staff coming. We introduced it, thinking it would benefit children. Now, we are in the 3rd phase, a period after entering temporary houses. Activities at temporary houses started in July. We are currently working at assembly halls in 4 temporary houses. In particular, we are focusing on offering academic support based on establishing close relationships... ...between children and support staff in a way of developing a fixed support staff system. We ask parents to fill in an application form and then select suitable staff for each child based on it... ...to ensure the same support staff will continue to help their child. Programming is carried out to some extent. Simply speaking, we have a three-month program. The first meeting is a place where children and supporters build a good relationship... ...and completely understand each other. We have actively collaborated with private sectors to improve our programs to a higher level. This is when an educational material company... ...came to introduce a system to print out materials suitable for each child on the spot. Other efforts include holding workshops for support staff in cooperation with major companies. We are now implementing other various activities... ...like running classes for children who moved to rental housing. Children were scattered to 8000 rental houses in Sendai alone. With the aim of extending full support to them, we are running our own classes. Another is publishing a white paper on children living in affected areas. Closely interviewing children and parents for a couple of hours... ...we write this paper to tell what is and will be needed... ...on behalf of children and parents living in affected areas. Lastly, although we are extending support to affected children, we shouldn't be solely satisfied with this. We have found similarities between the circumstances of affected children and those of children from poor families... ...the latter have already existed as a real problem. So far, we have worked to reduce the number of children who might be disadvantaged in future because of uncontrollable events. Regardless of uncontrollable circumstances caused by disaster or financial difficulties of their family... ...we must create a fair system to support both of them. This quake reminds us of this. Now I conclude my talk about the current activities and future plans of Asuiku. Thank you.