Non - Profit organization ho - Yu chief of the secretariat / npo法人 萌友 事務局長

Form of Support Part 1 "Emergency food distribution" Kiyoshi Watanabe Head of the secretariat of Hoyu, an NPO I am Kiyoshi Watanabe, head of the secretariat of Hoyu, an NPO. What we do is supporting homeless people to become independent. There are people who have been forced to live on the streets for various reasons. We are helping such people to get out of life on the streets... ...and re-enter society. This is what we are doing. To be specific... ...the homeless people live in stations, parks or tent villages. Such people need to register their addresses to apply for welfare. So they live in the apartment we are operating so that they can register the place as their address. Then they can apply to be on welfare. After their application is approved, they take a rest for a while and we support them mentally and physically. We encourage them to seek a job through a Public Employment Security Office... ...so that they can get an opportunity to reenter society. For now, 14 such people are living in our apartment. On 3/11, I was at Hoyu's office. Because our office is in an apartments built on the cliff, I was very frightened to think that I would be killed if the apartment was shaken off from the cliff. Hoyu also provided emergency food distribution for the affected people. As the North Sendai Catholic Church told us to use their emergency stock food for 100 people... ...we started to offer food on the night of March 14th. We continued it until March 31. At that time, utility services had been cut. There was a shortage of goods, fuel, especially, was running severely short We couldn't do what we wanted to do. On March 19, however, the public office designated our cars as emergency vehicles... ...which gave us the privilege of refueling, it was very helpful for us. The distribution system was also halted and it prevented relief supplies which... ...many people and organization offered to us to come through. Their supplies started to reach us from March 22. We distributed their relief goods to people lining up for our meal service. And we were also able to deliver the goods to an evacuation center in Ishinomaki in March. We also tried to offer meal service in Haramachi-ku, Minami-Soma that month. We went there only to find out that the place was like a ghost town. We could sense the atmosphere that people had rushed to flee the town. Although we were prepared for it, we couldn't distribute food there. In April, after we heard that masks were needed in Iwanuma... ...we delivered 3000 masks. Then we offered to give anything needed to the on-site disaster headquarters in Iwanuma and Watari. They turned down our offer by saying, "No, thank you, we 've already got enough." In May, in conjunction with the Sendai Civic Support Center... ...we distributed pork stew at three evacuation centers. On May 8th, we served 230 dishes in Sun Pier Sendai. On May 9th, we distributed 87 dishes in Tano Civic Center. On May 14, we provided 70 dishes in Kabanomachi elementary school. The people affected are now gradually moving into temporary housing from evacuation shelters. Due to some problems in those houses, we got engaged in their temporary housing issues. In their housing, there is an overhead cabinet above the sink in the kitchen. But the cabinet was clumsily positioned, and people were always bumping into the cabinet. So they asked us to move the cabinet up to where they could avoid collision. And they were also not happy about their shower *** which was inconveniently located in the bath tub. So they asked us to move the *** to the side wall of the washroom. So we did the job together with our Hoyu residents for 6 housing units. During the job, we chatted with a resident of one from Arahama 1 chome. He was the first to move into this housing unit. He said that the houses were tiny steel-framed prefab units... ...so he feared that it may be a big problem in summer, causing such things as heat strokes. Form of Support Sendai Civic Activity Support Center Center for remembering 3.11