Monday, November 10, 2008
New 4-ton truck added to 2HJ’s vehicles!
At long last, 2HJ has become the proud recipient of a 4-ton truck! The purchase of the truck was made possible by generous donations from NuSkin Japan. We sincerely thank NuSkin Japan for this important donation.
Soon after we received the truck, we took it down to Nagoya for a delivery. In Aichi and Mie, we delivered food to agencies in cooperation with Second Harvest Nagoya. We used to be able to deliver less than 2 tons of food at a time, but with the new truck, we can deliver more than 3 tons at a time. This means we can deliver more food in a more efficient manner.
So far, the truck has also shown outstanding performance for pickup of baby food and industrial refrigerators. Those who are most in need of food assistance are people like low-income single mother households and elderly households. They do not necessarily belong to any agencies, so one of our biggest goals is to establish a food assistance system for them. This truck represents the capacity for a big step toward that goal.
As the photos below show, this 4-ton truck really stands out in the streets. If you spot it somewhere, please wave hello to the driver!
2HJ’s new 4-ton truck
Loading the 4-ton truck
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Welcome, Yayoi Sogo, Volunteer Coordinator!
In July, Second Harvest Japan (2HJ) was pleased to welcome Yayoi Sogo as volunteer coordinator. Entering this new staff position, Yayoi fulfills the need for a central point person to manage the soup kitchen and other volunteer activities, which had always been largely volunteer-run. These activities have grown and evolved over the years thanks to the hard work of volunteers. Now, with Yayoi’s help, 2HJ will develop even more as we continue to depend on the good will and dedication of volunteers.
I know that the other volunteers will join me in welcoming Yayoi to the team, and I hope the below interview provides a good start for getting to know her!
Yayoi Sogo (left) with Patricia Decker, who served as volunteer coordinator since 2003.
Q: How did you find out about 2HJ?
Actually, I only found out about it recently. I had been interested in social entrepreneurship and non-profit organizations (NPOs) that support the socially disadvantaged, and I wanted to find a job that would let me provide such people with the things they need, thereby delivering hope and strength to them as well. At the beginning of 2008, I went to New York to visit some NPOs and find out how I could get involved but, since I also do other work, I was having trouble figuring out how I could balance my time and attention between both types of work. Just then, a friend saw a program featuring 2HJ on TV and told me about it.
Q: What made you decide to work at 2HJ?
I believe that at the very least, as we all carve out our path in life, each and every person should be ensured a basic living standard and a fair start. The fact that 2HJ’s activities focus on providing that most basic necessity—food—really resonated with me. My particular interest was in fighting poverty, but I learned that 2HJ’s deal not just with helping the needy, but also with making good use of foods that would have gone to waste (because of nearing expiration dates and other reasons), so we’re naturally involved in addressing environmental and other societal problems.
What really sealed my decision to work at 2HJ, though, was the fun experience of working together with the volunteers. Seeing such a large number of volunteers come together to make a huge amount of food for the soup kitchen, and the feelings of happiness and fulfillment I got from working as a team to make the food, brought back memories of the fun I’d had at my high school culture festivals.
Q: What do you do at 2HJ?
I basically coordinate the volunteers. The main volunteer activities happen Thursday through Saturday, so throughout the week I act as the point person for recruiting and signing up the number of volunteers needed for the activities, and on the day of the activities I assign the job responsibilities and oversee all the work.
Q: How do you spend your time when you’re not at 2HJ?
I work as a conference interpreter. Doing simultaneous interpretation, you work in a booth in total isolation; if you lose your concentration for even a moment, you miss what’s being said and can’t do your job. For me, it’s almost like some kind of ascetic training, trying to find that point where I cease to be aware of my own existence and can truly focus. The active cooperation of working with various people to produce something at 2HJ is the polar opposite of interpreting, and I feel that both are necessary jobs for my life.
Q: What are your hopes for contributing to 2HJ?
My first impression of 2HJ’s volunteers was of the overwhelmingly abundant number of people who signed up for or were interested in volunteering, as well as the fact that many of the volunteers were non-Japanese and had experience volunteering in their own countries. The volunteers are diverse not just in terms of nationality; they represent a variety of ages, viewpoints, and backgrounds. I’m realizing day by day what a treasure trove of resources this diversity amounts to. I think the richness of its volunteer base is 2HJ’s strength, and my goal is to make the best use possible of that invaluable power.
Interviewer: Patricia Decker
Link to News story »Monday, April 21, 2008
2HJ daikon harvesting event: Straight from the fields to 2HJ recipients
Pull, cut head, turn over, cut tail, set down. Pull, cut head, turn over, cut tail, set down.
What sounds like a streamlined slaughtering ritual, in reality is the daikon (i.e., Japanese white radish) harvesting routine of the 20 or so volunteers that answered 2HJ’s call to Okabe on Sunday February 24. They collected over 2 metric tons of daikon (from about 10 tons available on the field), all of which had been delivered to 2HJ’s recipients by February 27, only three days after the volunteers harvested them!
The following Sunday, March 2, a team of children (and their caretakers), aged from elementary to high school, took their turn and pitched in to harvest over 1.5 additional tons of daikon from the field. Coming from several of the homes to which 2HJ provides food, the children enjoyed the rare opportunity of harvesting their own food and eating it fresh from the field. The staff from the various participating children’s homes brought back a bounty of daikon to supplement meals at their agencies.
For 2HJ, it was the first time in its history that the organization literally lived up to its name by harvesting a field of donated vegetables. Due to this year’s early frosts, the usual daikon harvest period was cut short, leaving entire fields of the vegetable to the plough. Fortunately, one field of high-quality, mouth-watering daikon remained for 2HJ to gather.
Looking back, 2HJ’s Executive Director Charles McJilton stated: “I always wanted to bring such an event to life.” But the idea only gained momentum when 2HJ’s staff member Haijima-san revived the connection he had made with Mr. Karasawa (the main driver of this event on the Okabe community’s side) while working for a farmer in Miyazaki, Kyushu, before joining 2HJ. When the two met again after Haijima-san’s return to Tokyo, conversations about the details of vegetable cultivation eventually lead to reflections on if and how there might be opportunities for farming communities to contribute in their own way to 2HJ’s activities.
Farmers invest a tremendous amount of time and effort in growing crops and vegetables, “much like parents raising and educating their kids,” as Mr. Karasawa explains. It gives them a rather nauseous feeling watching the results of their efforts go to waste, be it because there are not enough hands available for harvesting all of it, or due to some follies of the change in season. Consequently, joining forces with 2HJ seemed like an optimal way to kill two birds with one stone: Not only did some of the yet unharvested daikon get harvested, but also there were people happily looking forward to such a highly valued addition to their menu.
Tired, cold, excited, covered from head to toe in soil blown upon us by the marrow-chilling wind and looking forward to dropping by the nearby onsen (i.e., local hot spring) before returning to Tokyo, all volunteers agreed that working in the fields and harvesting daikon with our own hands had taken the stress of city-life, at least temporarily, away from us. And, if only for a few hours, we had made the somewhat surprising discovery that country life was not all about sweet strawberries and gorgeous green meadows. The life of a farmer can be tough—and the strong winds, blinding us at times, forcing us to swallow more than the odd grain of soil and sand, served as a good example of how tough that life can be.
As the first time ran so smoothly and was a positive, educational and last but not least fun experience for all participants, 2HJ hopes to continue this newly set up collaboration with the Okabe agricultural community, and maybe even set up links to other communities in the future.
And, as 2HJ is now looking into converting this originally one-off event into a regular, maybe twice-a-year activity, I am looking forward to another of those rare opportunities where I get to work with my hands. Maybe I will be allowed once more the occasional glimpse to the panorama of the snow-covered Northern Alps rising at the horizon. No doubt at the end of another such day I will again fall into my bed with a rare but soothing, satisfactory feeling of having accomplished a truly productive day.
Writer/Photographer: Pamela Ravasio
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Harvest Pantry’s New Year’s Resolution: Gain Kilos
Harvest Pantry gained over 2,000 kilos over the holidays! This huge gain came in the form of canned and non-perishable food donated from school food drives.
Thanks to six schools in the Tokyo area last December, awareness, good will, and thousands of food items were raised for the Harvest Pantry. The American School in Japan (ASIJ) collected 750 kilos, Tokyo Korean School (TKS) 500 kilos, Nishimachi International School over 300 kilos, Camp Zama Middle School 250 kilos, Canadian Academy 280 kilos, and Seisen International School about 200 kilos.
Second Harvest Japan Executive Director Charles E. McJilton commented, “It is neat to see students make active contributions to the community. It helps them make a connection between their daily lives and those out there in need in Japan. It also reminds them that they can have a positive impact in the community they live in.”
In 2007, TKS doubled the food amount they collected from the previous year. To motivate their elementary students, they gave lottery tickets out for each item brought in and drew three winners at the end of the food drive. In addition, the teachers performed a dance routine to reward the students for collecting more than 2,000 food items.
Photo: Tokyo Korean School
TKS teacher Mark Valens said, “Students have positive memories about donating food to Second Harvest Japan, and they come away feeling good about themselves for making a difference in someone’s life. Nothing is better than that.”
In its sixth year of helping the hungry, ASIJ weighed in heavy. “Loading 750 kilos of food items in 2HJ’s truck was like trying to solve a rubik’s cube,” stated ASIJ Middle School Assistant Principal Meagan Pavey. “The sheer volume of food collected and all four divisions at ASIJ working together as a community were highlights this year.”
Photo: Meagan Pavey
At ASIJ, each division’s student government decided how food would be collected. The middle school’s Student Leadership Team held a competition between homerooms. Mr. Harris’s homeroom won. The group of 13 said, “We all tried our hardest. We thought about the people with no food, and we wanted them to have food for the holiday. Everybody should care about others.”
And it’s easy to do. Here are some pointers to run a successful food drive at your school, club, organization, sports team, or other community group.
- Contact 2HJ in advance to discuss needs and logistics
- Remember people are hungry all year round. Consider organizing food drives multiple times in a year
- Set clear start/end dates
- Quality control: Check collected items during and at the end of the food drive, and remove any expired or opened items. Since these items cannot be distributed, if donated they become a costly burden rather than a useful donation. Make this clear to students at the beginning
- Add the element of competition: Have classes/grades compete to see who can collect the most food
- Make it visible: Assign students to make eye-catching bulletin boards and decorated collection boxes
- Keep everyone posted: Post a tally sheet to show the amount of food collected in various categories so students can see what is still needed
- Hold kick-off and wrap-up events to educate students on hunger in Japan and to share the results
Writer: kmh
Link to News story »Monday, January 21, 2008
What is a food drive and how can you be a part of one?
A “food drive” is a volunteer activity in which people bring unneeded extra food from their homes to their school or office, where it is collected and distributed to local charitable organizations, facilities, and food banks. Food drives have been run successfully since the 1960s in the United States, where they originated, but in Japan the concept of food drives remains unfamiliar to many.
Over the past few years, however, this has gradually begun to change and food drives at work and school have become more common. Curves Japan, which owns and operates the women’s fitness club chain “Curves,” ran a food drive campaign in November 2007 calling on members at all of its 600 locations across Japan to bring food in.
Requiring only that the items be unopened, non-perishable at room temperature, and with an expiration date of February 2008 or later, Curves reportedly collected about 50 tons of rice, coffee, tea, sweets, and other canned, dry, and instant food items. This was then distributed to 300 local child-care facilities, churches, and single-parent support organizations.
Curves Japan found that many of their contributing members had wished for a long time that they could offer some assistance to those around them in need, but had simply never seen or had an opportunity to do so before the food drive. As volunteer activities that are easy to participate in and offer a direct connection to the local community, food drives are surely only going to become more popular as time goes on and people in Japan become more familiar with the concept.
Second Harvest Japan (2HJ) is delighted to offer know-how and advice for organizations running food drives or who would like to host a food drive. Food drives of various kinds have already been run in the Japanese offices of many major multinational companies. One international IT firm’s Japan branch ran a “rice drive,” asking their employees to bring rice to the office. Another company launched a food drive after a 2HJ volunteer who worked there made the suggestion to management.
“We bought too much canned food on sale and I don’t think we can finish it...”
“Our family receives so many gifts of tea that we just can’t drink it all...”
...Are you sure there isn’t any extra food lying around like this in your kitchen too? Why wait for it to pass its expiration date and be thrown out when you could put it to good use in a food drive?
Writer: Etsuko Ohara
Photos: Curves Japan
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