Action Plan under Recovery Assistance Project

Objective

Ishinomaki: City of Hopes and Dreams
Help children become the future of the community

Overview

JEN will continue to send UNIQLO staff volunteers to schools in the city of Ishinomaki to provide support to children. These activities will be conducted over the next three years. JEN will support young students while contributing to the community as a whole by engaging in reconstruction efforts. It will also provide psychological care for people who live in the area.
In the first year, JEN will conduct interviews to gather information and identify needs at schools. It will use volunteers to contribute to efforts to restore the educational environment while addressing urgent issues.
Teachers and parents usually work to improve educational environments at schools. But after the 2011 earthquake, people were forced to live under particularly difficult circumstances. At schools with high numbers of transfer students, teachers often struggle to deal with their administrative responsibilities and classroom duties. JEN sends volunteers to schools to support teachers and parents with extracurricular activities. It tries to create environments in which adults can focus on providing children with counseling and psychological care.

Activities

The aim is to provide wide-ranging support for school activities and functions. Examples include cleaning school buildings and assisting with preparations for extracurricular activities and school events. Additionally, through projects designed to encourage interaction between volunteers and children during breaks and recesses, contribute to fostering children possessing kind and generous natures.

Three-Year Goals

- Broaden the minds of children through regular interaction with volunteers
- Help to relieve stress in children (particularly students who need more attention from teachers)
- By accepting help from volunteers, teachers will be able to learn about different approaches to education and take on new challenges
- Develop an environment in which everyone can work together to tackle issues that are important to the community, by having children, parents, schools and communities cooperate with each other

Progress of Activities under Recovery Assistance Project (As of December 31, 2012)

1.

First group of volunteers: June 5-6; 40 volunteers
- Interviews at schools (13 schools visited)
- Discovery of fundamental issues by identifying problem areas on a map of the area

2.

Second group of volunteers: June 10-11; 40 volunteers
- Discovery of fundamental issues by identifying problem areas on a map of the area

3.

Third group of volunteers: July 17-18; 40 volunteers
- Interviews at schools (8 schools visited)
- Volunteer activities at schools
Teizan Elementary School (cleaning gutters: 10 volunteers)
Okaido Elementary School (sorting Bell Mark coupons: 6 volunteers)
Watanoha Elementary School (pulling weeds in the schoolyard: 12 volunteers)

4.

Fourth group of volunteers: September 25-26; 22 volunteers
- Volunteer activities at schools
Okaido Elementary School (Weeding: 22 volunteers)
Oginohama Elementary School (Cleaning school, interacting with students: 6 volunteers)
Teizan Elementary School (cleaning gutters: 10 volunteers)
Kama Elementary School (Organizing school library: 6 volunteers)

5.

Fifth group of volunteers: September November 6-7; 22 volunteers
- Volunteer activities at schools
Okaido Elementary School (sorting Bell Mark coupons, 22 volunteers)
Oginohama Elementary School (Cleaning school, interacting with students: 6 volunteers)
Kadowaki Junior High School (Removing debris, weeding, planting flowers, Minami-hama district)

Reports

The earthquake and tsunami changed the schools and the lives of the children in the area.

Almost every day, we receive requests from teachers and parents who want local children to interact with people from outside the community. As such, JEN positions student-volunteer interaction as a key element of its support activities.

For example, student numbers fell at one coastal school that was directly affected by the disaster. This meant that the school did not have enough students to clean the school, and the facilities on campus were left unclean. In physical education classes, there were not enough students to play team sports. This situation persists to this day, so UNIQLO sent employees to the school. In the mornings, they helped to clean the school, while during the lunch break they interacted with the students and played soccer with them.

Other schools located further inland were not directly affected by the tsunami and suffered comparatively little damage. But these schools were affected by the jump in student transfers. As a result, the parent-teachers association stopped functioning.

Volunteers have also helped to clean gutters and ditches in front of the schools and arranged library books to create more space for donated books. Through such activities, the volunteers are creating a more fun, comfortable environment for the children.

Future Plans

- We want to introduce more activities that will bring children and the volunteers closer together.
- We want to teach children to be considerate of others by having them participate in volunteer-led activities.

Many children have asked the UNIQLO volunteers many questions, including how to become a UNIQLO employee.
JEN hopes to give children the opportunity to interact with more UNIQLO employee volunteers, while helping with classroom activities. JEN wants to capitalize on the distinctive qualities of the UNIQLO volunteers to give children the chance to think about their futures and the purpose and meaning of work.