The FAJ has had the privilege of working with so many distinguished and capable individuals and organizations. It is clear to us that these great collaborations were possible because each of us have unique roles and areas of expertise.
As we have been supporting our various constituents, we have been fortunate to receive the following kind messages from our collaborators. We would like to take this opportunity to return the thanks, and to express our deep appreciation to all the organizations and individuals we feel so privileged to have worked with.
* in Japanese alphabetical order by name
The ADRA Japan had the privilege of being among the supporters who produced "the Meeting of Young Students from Futabamachi" on August 10, 2013, hosted by Futabamachi Townsman Meeting for Youth Development in Fukushima prefecture. This was the first opportunity for a reunion amongst the young people (mainly high school students) of Futabamachi since they were evacuated to other areas after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and subsequent accidents in the nuclear power plants.
The purpose of the meeting was to strengthen the youths' ties by giving them a chance to catch up with each other about their current situations and freely share their feelings about their hometown and their dreams for the future. We also hoped that at the end of the meeting the youths in attendance would say goodbye to one another with smiles, looking forward to their next opportunity to meet.
Members from the Disaster Recovery Support Section of the FAJ gave us their full support. As we prepared, you helped us formulate the meeting program. On the day of the meeting, you created a great space and supported the youth so that they could say what they had to say.
At the end we were deeply impressed to see the participants' faces, which showed a mixture of sadness to leave but also a renewal of spirit. The opinions and ideas they shared in the meeting were passed on to Futabamachi as a treasure. We believe the support from the Disaster Recovery Support Section will play a vital role in empowering people in Fukushima to successfully undertake their own recovery.
Yuki Aida
Manager of the East Japan
Specified nonprofit corporation ADRA Japan
When the great earthquake struck East Japan, I think most everyone had the thought that they must do something. I squeezed out all the wisdom I am capable of squeezing and made a commitment with close friends to start a nationwide network of providers from the private sector. Right after the earthquake, our meetings were filled with volunteers and NPO's, and of course there was some chaos: there were numerous critical issues needing immediate attention, and it was a struggle to decide where to start. That was when the FAJ volunteered to facilitate in the chaos. I imagine that the skilled and caring members of the FAJ also joined to support our efforts all over Japan. Each one of them were high spirited and offered all the skills they had to clarify the points of each discussion and sort out issues by theme. As a result, we were able to use our limited meeting time extremely effectively. I am grateful for your continuous support even today. I would like to express my deep appreciation for the FAJ, and at the same time I sincerely hope we can continue to tackle problems that are becoming submerged over time yet remain critically serious in the disaster areas.
Nobuyuki Kurita
Principal Caretaker
The Japan Civil Network for Disaster Relief in the East Japan (JCN)
In the wake of the accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants that started in the East Japan Great Earthquake disaster, most residents of Minamisoma city evacuated from the town. Later I returned to Minamisoma and met three of my friends, Eiji Sudo, Yuji Miyamori and Miharu Takamura, and we agreed that we needed to take care of people's psychological recovery. We started our organization "Tsunagarou Minamisoma (Let's connect, Minamisoma)" for that purpose.
Soon we found ourselves frustrated in our meetings. We asked you, the FAJ, to show us how to make our meetings productive. You provided facilitation which generated an environment in which we could say what we thought and felt openly and freely. Something essential began to show itself from our exchange of various opinions, and this turned into an opening for specific actions.
I cannot get over the surprise and excitement I experienced in witnessing this transformational process. I was driven to share this with other organizations and to have study meetings with them. Our plan for the "Minamisoma Dialogue Festival" was generated from these conversations, and this turned out to be a huge event.
I am forever grateful to the FAJ. It is our encounter with you and your facilitation skills that allowed people to be connected and be themselves at the same time, and that's what made it possible for us to continue to carry the torch of civil movement even throughout the chaotic period in Minamisoma.
Mikako Takahashi
"Tsunagarou Minamisoma"
Our project above took us two years from its conception to the publication of the output. I would like to express our deep appreciation to the FAJ, who supported us from the very first workshops in three prefectures in the Tohoku area. They played vital roles in planning and facilitation which evoked people's participation.
We asked the FAJ to support us, not only because they were a professional group of competent facilitators, but more importantly they are also external stakeholders for the disasters in Tohoku area and joined us at the sites from the beginning. It is normal for international aid operations to assess their projects. I wanted our project to be assessed for its effectiveness by the people who participated and got involved rather than by the organization's in-house assessment, which would be typical for an international project and in my personal opinion, tends to result in a self-approving plan.
The result was excellent in terms of the synergistic effect of connecting each other's expertise. We learned that it is actually very valuable to have collaboration between the experts and the people who were directly affected by the disaster, to accurately evaluate and assess the effectiveness of the emergency humanitarian support. I hope we can continue to have these types of effective alliances.
Makoto Tajima
Adviser on Disaster Prevention
(then chief coordinator for earthquake disaster task force)
Certified NPO Corporation "JANIC: Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation"
I encountered "facilitation" in the preparatory committee meeting for the "Minamisoma Dialogue" in October 2011. The facilitator nudged me to say what I thought about "how to give local people a place to express what they think." I felt what I said was well-received and related to by other participants. That was a subtle but very powerful moment for me. I then joined the Support Center for Citizens Activities and my daily job made me realize the importance of having people give their voice to what they think and feel. Since 2014 we have hosted several seminars on facilitation with assistance from the FAJ's Disaster Recovery Support Section
In Minamisoma, the town where I live, especially in the Kodaka Ward, the evacuation order will be lifted in March 2016 and I expect residents will begin to come back to the town. "Facilitation" is imperative to allow the deep conversations and dialogues necessary to build our town newly. Unless we change our orientation from confrontation-style to dialogue-style, the re-building of Kodaka Ward is destined to be slow.
Through my work, I want to continue to emphasize to the public sector how important facilitators are for the creation of room for dialogue.
Yoshimi Hoshino
Division for Recovery Support
Minamisoma Citizens' Activity Support Center
We met people from the FAJ at the Local Meeting hosted by JCN. Later, in the wake of the massive landslide disaster in Hiroshima prefecture on August 20, 2016, we got help from the FAJ's Disaster Recovery Support Section in sharing necessary information with other supporting organizations.
Learning the importance of the preparation meeting, and how to set up dialogues and conversations in the real meeting, had a great impact on me. Normally "support for recovery from a disaster" has people imagine how to manage volunteer centers and lots of physical activities. However, FAJ's support for us was about designing our meetings, and because of this we learned that allocating as much time as possible beforehand to the design and preparation of the actual meeting greatly elevates the odds of accomplishing the intended outcome within a limited time.
It was extremely fortunate for those of us who render actual support to the disaster sites that the FAJ was generous enough not to limit their resources only to the Tohoku area, but extend it to other areas of disaster in Japan. We felt that you had our back. Thank you so much.
Fuminori Matsuyama
Executive Director of SHINTSUNA
(National Network of Groups connected by Earthquake Disasters)
The local community in Oya-machi town in Kesennuma City last year approved the establishment of The Review Committee for Oya-machi Town Planning, mainly for the younger generation's participation. The committee has been working on the recovery and maintenance plan for the damaged Oya beach area, specifically in consensus-building for plans such as the construction of "Michi no Eki" (a road station for shopping), building of the tide breakers, recovery of ocean-swimming visitors to our beaches, etc. In the middle of our efforts to find ways to create these consensuses, the FAJ gave us an opportunity to share our challenges and get to know other activists in the event held for the Tohoku area. Through this encounter, in contrast with our trial-and-error method to find ways to create consensus, what we found in the event were many activities conducted with established, solid methodologies. We were inspired to watch many different facilitation models in action and we learned many skills to build consensus in our town re-building plans. I would like to participate in this kind of opportunity in the future, to learn more about skills in facilitation so that we can keep learning and improving our own skills.
Tomoyuki Miura
The Review Committee for the Oya-Sato-Umi Planning
Two years after the East Japan Great Earthquake disaster, there were various meetings and briefings taking place. It appeared to be difficult for many residents to say what they thought and to come up with specific proposals. So, we requested that the FAJ to come to support us with our seminar. Our goal was to figure out how we can empower our local area and support people in a way that takes the best advantage of our local resources. We named the seminar "Hyokkori Hyoutan* Seminar (refer to as "seminar" after this).
*Note to English readers: the name Hyokkori Hyoutan is from a popular Japanese children's program in the 1960's, about a small island that is constantly adrift, so the residents must work together to meet new challenges, and they discover themselves in the process.
In the seminar, we started to create a space where people both in and out of the town can learn together and naturally end up with their own new insights. The ideas and insights we heard in the seminars gave us numerous hints for re-building our town newly. These ideas became the building blocks to create a structure which made us see our local resources from a totally new perspective. Combining these building blocks, these new insights, often made us discover previously unnoticed charms and attractions of our area.
We are committed to providing a space to empower our local area.
Sachiko Motomochi
NPO Tsudoi
We established the Collaboration and Support Network for Evacuees in Yamagata prefecture for middle and long-term support of evacuees from the East Japan Great Earthquake who came to the area. The purpose of the Network is to facilitate information-sharing among supporting individuals and organization members to allow more corporation and collaboration among them, which contributed to their ability to provide finely tuned customized support for the needs of each evacuee.
Our job is to support the members of the Network, and one of the initiatives undertaken by the Network is to host a regular meeting of their members to exchange opinions and facilitate information sharing, corporation and collaborations. In fiscal year 2014 (Heisei 26 year), we requested FAJ's support with facilitation so that we would be able to conduct effective meetings using group work, while deepening the discussion by drawing more participation and opinions from participants. As a result, about 90% of participants checked "satisfied" in their exit survey and even requested to have facilitators in the next meeting. Our intention was fulfilled.
Moving forward, the Network will provide meaningful support to the evacuees in Yamagata prefecture through our collaboration with the facilitators.
Disaster Recovery and Evacuees Support Team
Crisis Management and Safety in Life Section
Environment and Energy Division of Yamagata Prefecture