After the 3.11 Earthquake and Tsunami that hit Japan, our director Akira Uchimura went to the area as a volunteer, with this experience we decided to recruit volunteers among the International Students that are in Japan. We teamed up with Gakuvo and the Nippon Foundation in their ROAD project, which is doing a lot of different work in the Tohoku area, covering all phases since post-disaster emergency relief to helping people recover their daily life. It’s a large scale project that will need around 37 million USD to be fully implemented, thought they have already reached half of their funding (around 18 million USD by the end of May) there’s still a long way to go so please consider donating to them.

Our work consists of organizing teams of International Students and helping coordinate the work and the communication among the Japanese organizations and the volunteers, as well as secure that there are volunteer translators in each team as well. As in the end of June we have sent 97 International Students from 33 different countries to the Tohoku area.

There are 3 main objectives that we aim for in these missions:

First is to help the people physically, doing jobs that need a lot of people, such as removing debris and mud left by the tsunami. Although the Japanese Self-Defence forces, the federal and local government and companies are working hard, the disaster area is too wide, there are places that heavy-machinery simply cannot enter and human hands are the best way to accomplish the work.

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Second is to show them that people from around the world are cheering for them, wishing that they get back to their normal life as soon as possible. One thing is knowing that people from around the world are donating money, food, clothing, medicine and such. Another thing is having dozens of people from around the world at your backyard helping clean things up. These people don’t need only physical support, they need a lot of encouragement as well.

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Third is to spread the word around the world, letting people know how Tohoku is recovering. We ask that once the International Students come back, that they spread the word among their friends, telling others about their experiences from their point of view. We think that by doing this we can let the right information flow, changing the catastrophic image that many still hold in their minds. We can’t let that image stick with Tohoku for ever, as that actually hampers the recovery of the area.

We will do our best to keep the International Student Volunteers going to the areas. If you know someone who wants to go, please ask them to visit our website at www.nikkeiyouth.com to see what is the latest mission.