March 2011 disaster unfolds quest by activists for better style of support for survivors (2)

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The evacuees to Fukuoka include many fatherless families of mothers and small children only. This reflects the difficulties of finding jobs for fathers in the unfamiliar places to which they have to evacuate. “Because we had to take care of these evacuees, we had to explore a support style with which we can meet their needs even more carefully,” Iida said.
So far, about 150 families have used services provided by his group, and a third of them have actually evacuated to Fukuoka.
Imamura’s group is pinning hopes on the possibility of small, community-based businesses as a model for a sustainable style of life in the future. These businesses will be feasible only if 500,000 to one million yen of profit can be reaped a year, among them small-scale poultry farming and timber and charcoal production from forest thinning, he said.
If these test projects turn out to be feasible, “we’d like to propose them to people in the affected areas and help secure jobs for their future life,” Imamura said. The bottom line is how to support the affected people in rehabilitating their life and to this end, how to secure stable employment for them, he said.
Support for the evacuees from the affected regions is seen to be carried out mainly by local government entities. But Iida’s cloud-style organization is aimed at combining public-sector organizations, private businesses in various sectors, volunteer groups and individual volunteers to each other in an effective manner. “Whoever does whatever can be done for the affected people. This is our policy,” he said.
His group organizes a “café” for young mothers who have evacuated to Fukuoka basically once a month, providing an opportunity for them to talk to each other about their matters of concern.
One of the member groups within the citizens’ network is involved in an activity for cleaning 200,000 pieces of damaged pictures collected from among the rubble by volunteers in a tsunami-hit area in Miyagi Prefecture.
The restored pictures will be displayed at community centers and other public facilities and then returned to owners.
The picture cleaning project is joined by many individual volunteers and supported by networks of volunteer groups, and these groups are linked to each other once again in different projects and through different networks.
The number of volunteers actually working in the affected areas, individual or not, is said to have decreased to 10 pct of about 170,000 just after the disaster. But networks of volunteer groups, if carefully managed, are expected to increase in the years ahead, at a time when Japanese are struggling for ways to cooperate in overcoming Japan's ordeal after the unprecedented disaster.

March 2011 disaster unfolds quest by activists for better style of support for survivors (1)

Feb. 20, 2012

March 2011 disaster unfolds quest by activists for better style of support for survivors

The catastrophe of March 11, 2011, notably the earthquake-triggered tsunami waves and the ensuing nuclear plant accident, represented not only the beginning of ordeal for survivors but also the start of struggle by civic activists to better their style of support for disaster-hit people across Japan.
The devastating earthquake and the killer tsunami waves as well as the radioactive leakage accident are believed to have caused a population shift of almost a million from northeastern and eastern Japan to the rest of Japan.
At least 3,000 to 4,000 people have evacuated from the affected regions and neighboring areas to Fukuoka Prefecture, the most populous region in Kyushu, southwestern Japan, according to Shinichi Iida, a Fukuoka City-based NPO activist. About 70 percent of the evacuees have come from the greater Tokyo area. This reflects fears of radioactive contamination following the explosion of three of the six reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s No.1 Fukushima nuclear power station, whose cooling water system was damaged by the tsunami waves.
“We must be aware that the whole of Japan has become a disaster area,” said Iida, 35, a native of Tokyo. He represents the Fukuoka Citizens’ Network established as a nonprofit organization after the disaster to support the evacuees and other affected people. The network loosely links NPO groups and other interested organizations for support to disaster-hit people who need help. Efforts to support the affected people should be carried out in a comprehensive manner in a long-term perspective, Iida said in a recent interview.
Support activities by Iida’s group are divided into outward, direct jobs in disaster areas and inward jobs, such as counseling, mental care and nursery service for evacuee families. The number of member entities involved in these jobs has increased to about 70 from eight at the start, said Iida, who himself works as a business consultant and a food education adviser.
Kazuhiko Imamura, an NPO activity leader in Fukuoka, also believes that support for the disaster areas must be continued in the long run.
He inaugurated local supporters’ conference and helped organize workshops and various other events from just after the disaster. But he now focuses on a longer-term approach for finding an effective means of supporting the livelihood of the affected people. “We have to question ourselves if our life has been truly sustainable” following the latest disaster, he said. What is questioned now is the way of life in unaffected areas, not in affected areas, Imamura said.
Imamura, 53, a veterinary surgeon, questioned, “Whether can we, those who consume massive amounts of electricity, truly support people suffering from radioactive contamination in the areas around the Fukushima nuclear plant?“
The natural disaster claimed approximately 19,000 lives and, combined with the nuclear plant accident, dislocated hundreds of thousands of people mainly in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan.
Iida and his staff are busy sorting out life-related goods donated by supporters every time before supplying them to the evacuees in Fukuoka. Iida’s NPO group stores used refrigerators and other contributed big products in a warehouse, but small items, mainly those for kids, are piled up at a corner in his office.
The donated items are provided on a first-come-first-served basis free of charge to evacuees. So far, thousands of pieces of goods have been provided to 50 families. “The donated items we see here in today are limited, but we have lots of items in this office before putting them up on our web album” for supply to the evacuees, he said.

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