lifestyle

NPOs on the ground in Tohoku - 6 months after March 11

12 Comments
By Tish Robinson

This month marks the six-month anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The Tohoku disaster continues, long after the international community’s attention has gone on to other things. However, the need there remains dire. As of August, close to 100,000 people were still displaced, and most are still living in evacuation centers.

NPOs (non-profit organizations) have played a unique role in Tohoku’s recovery, stepping in when local governments were wiped out or paralyzed and bringing new meaning to the term non-governmental organization in Japan. In addition, the five NPOs interviewed here offer insight into the needs on the ground as we enter into autumn.

A Westerner visiting Japan initially might think there is only a very nascent culture of volunteering in Japan. Actually, volunteering has a long tradition in Japan; it just has a very different flavor from that in the U.S. Most Japanese mothers with school-age children volunteer for the school’s Fubokai (Parent Teacher Association), and you often see parents with yellow “Patrol” signs on their bicycle baskets, peddling around on “Neighborhood Bike Patrol.” Similarly, Kinjokai (local neighborhood associations), especially in suburbs and smaller towns, are very active cleaning local parks, helping elderly neighbors who are sick, etc. Even companies have traditionally cleaned local neighborhoods and helped current or past members in distress.

The difference is that, in Japanese community organizations, volunteers generally help people they know, not strangers. In towns along the coast in Tohoku, where whole neighborhoods have been wiped out, these traditional forms of helping each other have been washed away. In their place is a grave need for volunteers to come in from outside to help clean homes of mud, repair fishing nets, rebuild homes, and help provide psycho-social support. The scale of the disaster is vast, covering over 200 miles of coast line, and the need support is equally immense.

The closest comparison in the U.S. to the Tohoku disaster may be Hurricane Katrina, which was of a much smaller scale. In Hurricane Katrina, 1,836 people died, and total property damage was estimated at $81 billion. By comparison, Tohoku experienced 8 times more loss of life and 4 times more damage than in Katrina, with 15,457 people dead (and over 5,000 still missing as of August), and total property damage estimated at far over $300 billion.

Yet, far more money in donations came to the aid of those in Hurricane Katrina than to help in the much larger Tohoku disaster. In response to Hurricane Katrina, American NPOs received $5.25 billion in donations from the public and corporations (CNN Sept 13, 2005) in response to the $81 billion in damages. In Tohoku, NPOs received only $3 billion in donations from companies and the public, in response to the estimated $300 billion in damages.

10 NPOs in Ishinomaki

As a result, while the needs are greater in Tohoku, the NPO resources to address them are much smaller, and the NPOs themselves are far fewer in number. In the Ishinomaki, the area hardest hit by the tsunami, there are around 10 ongoing, established NPOs on the ground (with year round operations and a full-time headquarters) doing relief-stage work, and 200 ad-hoc groups (formed after 3.11 to address the tsunami), with the largest of the established NPOs currently on the ground being Peace Boat. The 10 or so ongoing, established NGOs in Ishinomaki stand in stark contrast to the thousands of established, ongoing NPOs on the ground in Hurricane Katrina.

So what are NPOs on the ground doing in Tohoku? Below, NPOs share what they have been up to, as a way to give us a sense of the situation there, as well as the needs and challenges on the ground there. We will hear from Charles McJilton of Second Harvest Japan, Tatsuya Yoshioka of Peace Boat, Miyako Hamasaka of Japan Emergency NGO, Isa Ichikawa of Hope International, and Kentaro Yamazaki of Habitat for Humanity Japan. This list of NPOs is in no way complete, but is just a sample of the NPOs active in Tohoku.

SECOND HARVEST

Second Harvest Food Bank Japan is the largest food bank in Japan, gathering surplus food from companies and providing it to people in need. Second Harvest has been operating in Japan for eleven years, and helping out with the disaster in Tohoku since March 13, from Iwaki-shi in the south all the way up to Yamada-machi in the north, reaching out to different locations in the region. Recently, Second Harvest has forwarded 300 boxes (each one weighing 20 to 25 kilograms) to Minami-Sanriku and 100 boxes to Shinchi-Machi and Minami-soma. Charles McJilton, head of Second Harvest Japan, noted, “Whenever we go to an area, we look for two different things. Is there a need? Is there someone we can work with in that area? Without both of those key pieces in place we find that we have no traction.”

Second Harvest has adapted their response to this disaster from their normal approach to food distribution. In response to the Tohoku disaster, they have adjusted to the Japanese concept of "fukohei ni naranai you ni," meaning everything equal to everybody. McJilton noted, “If Japanese organizations receive 300 boxes, they all have to be the same. That means that 70 to 80% of the food delivered has to be purchased. On a normal basis, all the food that Second Harvest receives is free. There is no reason for us to buy it, it is there. But because of the requirement on the ground in Tohoku, Second Harvest is spending anywhere between 4,500 to 7,500 yen per box per household up there, which can run anywhere from 1.5 to 2.25 million yen a week, just to get food up there to one location.”

The second adjustment Second Harvest has made in Tohoku is to "enryo," people’s being reserved. McJilton notes, “If Second Harvest goes to a community in Tohoku and says, ‘I have 2,000 peaches, the local people will say, ‘Well, we’ll take five cases.’ I know that their situation in the next six to nine months is not going to change dramatically. So they could actually use all 2,000 peaches. They don’t want to waste. They don’t want to show they are using more than the next person and they don’t want to be concerned about neighboring communities. Are they taking more than other people? That has also been a major challenge for us as an organization. We have had 90 different shipments up there with our own trucks and other organizations providing food up there and we will continue to do that. Regarding 'enryo,' every time you talk to a community and say you are going to provide a service for them, they ask about the community next to them. Are we going to get to them too? Because I don’t want to be first. Don’t give me too much. Don’t take too much. It is very real.”

McJilton continued, “Our experience here is proving that it is not possible to get the top people on board, unless you get the people below them on board too. On March 23, we delivered some food to Minami-soma and we went down to the Shiyaku-Sho (City Hall), and said we are a national food bank and this is what we can do for you. They said 'We are doing OK, we are fine.' On March 24, the mayor went out to appeal, ‘We need help, we need help!’ We said we are here, we are offering.”

McJilton added, “In Minami-Sanriku, there are 1,400 different families that we are providing support to. The government there has gymnasiums full of food that they are not releasing, because they don’t have food for all 1400 people. Working with an NGO, we say we are going to do it at our pace, 300 boxes a week. This is one avenue, one way of doing it. The NGO itself says it actually wants 400 to 500 boxes a week and we are just like, we’d love to, but we have a budget and other people to provide services for.”

In the next one or two years, Second Harvest is looking to: 1) create a food lifeline, and 2) create a food safety net. The food lifeline connects available food to people in need. Every year Japan has tons of food available that is destroyed. This is not food left over from restaurants; but food that does not reach consumers for a variety of reasons. At the same time, the poverty rate in Japan is 15%, with 20 million people living below the poverty line. In the Tohoku region since the disaster, that is much higher. The mission is to get the large amount of food available out to people in need much more efficiently.

Second, a food safety net is simply a place where someone can get a box of food, groceries, ideally in their in their own neighborhoods, their community, their own city. McJilton noted, “If you were in New York City today, you would have 900 different locations to get emergency groceries. In Chicago, you have 600. If you are in San Francisco; 250. In all of Japan, you might be lucky to find three different locations you can turn to to get emergency groceries.” Second Harvest Japan has a vision of creating that kind of food safety net in Tohoku. And they are always looking for partners.

PEACE BOAT

Peace Boat has one of the largest operations in Tohoku, having organized 4,500 volunteers and 25,000 volunteer hours as of the end of July. As one of the founding members of the Ishinomaki Disaster Recovery Assistance Council, Peace Boat has been working very closely with the authorities in the city. Until now, the focus of Peace Boat has been on Ishinomaki, getting rid of the tsunami mud and debris to recover the use of homes, shops and public areas, and providing hot meals to survivors, particularly those in isolated and outlying areas of the city.

Peace Boat has always developed their programs in response to the needs of the community, and as local requests for help shifted, so are the efforts of Peace Boat’s programs shifting. Other local communities have now approached Peace Boat to begin to find ways to develop programs aimed to self-sustaining industry support. So, while continuing the mud clearance and food distribution in Ishinomaki, volunteers are now in the Oshika Peninsula, one of the centers for the local fishing industry, working on the restoration of harbor store houses, and the recovery of boats and nets. Peace Boat is salvaging the fishing equipment, particularly untangling the nets, and returning them to the fisherman in order that they can be reused.

A further emerging need is within the temporary housing sites, where communicating information to the survivors has become a challenge as strong community networks do not yet exist in these sites. Peace Boat is starting a community newsletter in the Ishinomaki temporary housing sites that provides localized up-to-date information about facilities and opportunities.

Peace Boat continues to host volunteers as we enter the autumn. One of the by-products of volunteering is its positive effect on post traumatic stress. Disaster survivors have very few people they can communicate within the shelters and the city, as everyone is burdened by loss. However, due to cultural factors in this very traditional region survivors are less inclined to make use of the counseling-type services on offer.

Volunteers, as outsiders, can lessen the burden by providing a "safe" pair of ears to share the experience while working alongside the survivors, creating a natural release and an aid to rehabilitation. As the nature of the volunteer work changes from the days spent digging mud with the survivors, one of the ways Peace Boat will continue to facilitate this interaction is through the delivery of the newsletter mentioned above by volunteers to the survivors in the temporary houses.

Looking further into the future, Peace Boat sees the need both to develop ways for the local people to take greater ownership of the relief efforts themselves, and to improve the capacity for volunteer coordination throughout Japan. With this in mind, they have developed a plan for a Disaster Relief Volunteer Center. Recognizing that one of the features that slowed relief was the lack of individuals trained in disaster relief, both locally and at a national level, and especially those who could act as volunteer coordinators with the capacity to organize efficient and safe deployment of volunteer groups, Peace Boat has designed a program to address that need.

While continuing the regular volunteer deployment, they will also conduct a series of one-week training programs in the field to train people in the basic, hands-on skills of safety training and first aid, including psychological aid; but also leadership training in how to mobilize and organize local resources as well as how to interface with local, national and international aid groups and providers. The goal is to build up an active network of trained volunteer coordinators across who can continue to support recovery efforts in Tohoku but will also, crucially, be ready to respond quickly in future disasters. Finally, Peace Boat will continue to support local residents to elicit support that can be used right away to continue the rebuilding effort in Tohoku.

JEN (Japan Emergency NGO)

JEN, The Japan Emergency NGO, started in 1994 in former Yugoslavia as an NGO implementing assistance for survivors of conflicts and natural disasters. Presently, JEN operates in eight countries. In Japan, their work in Miyagi is based in Ishinomaki. When the 3.11 disaster struck, JEN’s first assistance team went in March, and since then, JEN has been supporting the people of Ishinomaki and in relief and emergency assistance. Long-term, their focus is to implement psycho-social care and to support disaster victims achieve self-reliance.

In the first emergency phase, JEN dispatched sludge removal volunteers and supplied a soup kitchen in response to the needs there. In the second recovery phase, JEN is integrating their assistance and work with volunteers from the relief phase into focusing more on psycho-social care. When volunteers work in a soup kitchen or assist someone dig out their home and chat with them while volunteering, talking to outsiders actually provides a chance for communication, since disaster victims may not feel comfortable talking about their experiences with other victims yet. To avoid disaster victims becoming dependent on soup kitchens rather than returning to independence and self-reliance, JEN ended one of the soup kitchen in Ishinomaki on the 10th of June, and instead integrated the soup kitchen into the community space they have provided.

JEN has three such community spaces in Ishinomaki, and they plan to expand to up to ten, including newly established community spaces in the compound in temporary shelters. Recently, JEN has been providing daily living items to the 7,500 temporary housing units which Ishinomaki City is building with the support from the city government. These supplies have included 70 items ranging from nail clippers, to chopsticks, to towels, to futon covers.

To implement all this assistance JEN needs human resources. Toward this end, JEN always aims to maximize local resources. This means that from the very beginning JEN hired local staff, including six local staff in early April. These six local staff actually learned how to run JEN’s programs in Phase 1, and 2 of relief and recovery. JEN then expanded their local team to twenty people, and hired ten more local staff. In order to provide more supplies to the temporary shelters, they needed more hands, so hired more local staff.

These approaches support JEN’s goals of self-reliance and psycho-social self-reliance. JEN estimates it takes at least three to five years to recover from a major disaster. JEN provided assistance for the Niigata Chuetsu earthquake and it ended last year for the people of one village.

HOPE International Development Agency, Japan

HOPE International Development Agency, Japan (HOPE-JP) is an organization working with the extreme poor in developing nations, with the goal of helping them become self-reliant. Taking families and communities out of the vicious cycle of poverty and helping them “take their first step towards a better life through a water well or education or something to get them to become self-reliant,” according to Isa Rondon Ichikawa, Communications Coordinator of HOPE-JP.

A few days after 3.11, they received a $1 million donation from one of their corporate sponsors, Oak Lawn Marketing, to create the “Genki Japan Fund” so they could start their activities in Tohoku. As a first step, HOPE-JP joined forces with the Helicopter Conference of Japan (HGC), a group of helicopter pilots.

Lowell Sheppard, Asia-Pacific Director of HOPE-JP, and Harry Hill, president of Oak Lawn Marketing, flew on one of the first flights to survey damage in Ibaraki, Fukushima and Miyagi prefecture. This soon followed by delivery of emergency supplies, with the help of Global Medic, to isolated areas where transportation was slow to get in due to damaged bridges or lost ferry boats.

That same day, they also started a community drive in Nagoya, appealing to their supporters in the community to donate essential items that the survivors were in desperate need of, including diapers, baby formula, bottles etc. HOPE-JP organized four trucks and two warehouses, one near Sendai and one in Fukushima, with the one in Sendai operating as a base for the helicopters. HOPE-JP built a shipping pipeline through personal connections and community leaders to provide a steady flow of requested daily needed items, food and work supplies.

The main goal of HOPE-JP is sustainable economic development. To that end, HOPE-JP established an office in Kurihara City, where they plan to work on sustainable development in the affected area during the next three to five years. They have two volunteer staff members, and through a donation from Baxter they were able to create two full-time local development officers positions, which they are recruiting for now in Tohoku. HOPE-JP’s “Rebirth: a return to self-reliance” projects are geared to restart the economy.

Their plan, according to Ichikawa, is to give disaster-hit communities “the burst of energy that they need; helping business owners to get their businesses back on their feet.” Exemplifying this, they gave a grant of 4.5 million yen to IVY for a cash-for-work program to clean up 50 houses. Another of HOPE’s many projects is the repair and refurbishing of a garage for fishing boats to be able to repair the boats that were damaged by the tsunami.

HOPE and Herman Miller, working with Ishinomaki Chamber of Commerce, plans to create an education center to train high school students in carpentry. HOPE-JP is helping OGA for AID start their Green Farmer’s Association. Finally, in partnership with Japan Coast to Coast, they are organizing the 1st Annual Cycling Festival Sept 23-25, hoping to promote Tohoku as a future cycling tourism destination.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY

Habitat for Humanity Japan sent two volunteer teams to Ofunato and Rikuzentakata in June, and two more teams in July to clear debris and clean mud from people’s homes. In the three months following the disaster, many houses were still standing, but were full of mud. In addition to cleaning homes, HFH Japan’s over 100 volunteers also worked in rice fields, and in community buildings and public spaces, such as parks.

Takeshi Nakano, an architect from Tokyo, noted while cleaning mud from a shop, “Just walking around the area, you can see that major debris have been cleared away. Some buildings are still standing, but if you look closely, you can see that these buildings were submerged up to the first floor, some to the second floor, and most of them have broken doors and windows covered by temporary sheeting. It has been three months since the earthquake and tsunami, but so many people still need support. Coming here as a professional architect and as a volunteer, I have seen the reality of what it is like, and I want to tell people exactly what I saw and how I felt in Iwate Prefecture.”

With the start of autumn, Habitat for Humanity is starting to distribute “home starter kits” to families moving into temporary housing. The kits include items like bamboo mats, bedding, linen, and kitchen equipment, like pans and utensils, to give much-needed assistance to families who have lost everything. Habitat for Humanity Japan is working in partnership with All Hands Volunteers in Ofunato and Rikuzentakata.

GOING FORWARD

Louisa Rubenfien, Japan scholar, shared an intriguing idea for providing psycho-social support to disaster victims in Tohoku. She suggested pairing Tokyo housewives with Tohoku housewives through short visits several times a year. In keeping with the Japanese preference for human relationships, the relationships should be long-term, not just one-off meetings. This raises the question of how to make these relationships long-term and ongoing. Rubenfien suggested that an exchange of some kind is necessary to allow the relationships to blossom and endure over time. Her idea was to have Tohoku wives open their home to 2-3 Tokyo wives once a quarter, where they could exchange local recipes of knowledge of some sort. Surely, it is relationships that will help provide the psycho-social care so desperately need in times of great loss.

NPOs provide the bridge for people to volunteer, playing a critical role in coordinating projects with local governments and overseeing safety. The NPOs that are the most successful in these types of situations are the ones where relationships are often long-term. As we move into rebuilding and rehabilitation, long-term relationships between organizations such as companies, chambers of commerce, and schools, as well as between individuals, may be the key.

Contact info

Peace Boat: Rachel Armstrong, Tel: +81-(0)90-9962-4891, Email: rachel@peaceboat.gr.jp

JEN—Japan Emergency Network: Miyako Hamasaka, Tel: +81-(0)3-5225-9357, Email: hamasaka@jen-npo.org

Second Harvest Japan: Email Charles McJilton at charles@2hj.org

HOPE International Development Agency: Contact: Isa Ichikawa, Tel. +81-(0)52-204-0530, Email: isa@hope.or.jp

Habitat for Humanity: Shuko Nitta, Tel. +81-(3)-6459-2070. Email: snitta@habitatjp.org 

Chidren without Borders: http://knk-network.org/act_news_japan/Edirector20110707ENG.pdf, Volunteering: kodomo@knk.or.jp

Tish Robinson is a professor at Hitotsubashi University ICS and head of the Volunteer Affinity Group at the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ). If you would like to volunteer in Tohoku, please contact Tish at tishintokyo@gmail.com. Also, if your company has been doing CSR is response to the Tohoku Disaster, please drop her an email and share what your company is doing.

© Japan Today

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12 Comments
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Good for these NPOs and odd comments in there just reveal the shocking state of the governmental response. Where is all that money that was donated? How is it being spent? Who is responsible for its distribution?

just a few comments based on my own experiences:

The difference is that, in Japanese community organizations, volunteers generally help people they know, not strangers

The difference is, Japanese community volunteers help when it will have a benefit for themselves - if their community is clean, crime free and safe, it is good for them. When I was collecting either money or rice donations for a rice drive we had going up to Tohoku, I was getting an average of 10,000 yen from complete strangers overseas, and I was getting 500 yen on average from people within Japan who had links to us!

Regarding ‘enryo,’ every time you talk to a community and say you are going to provide a service for them, they ask about the community next to them. Are we going to get to them too? Because I don’t want to be first. Don’t give me too much. Don’t take too much. It is very real.”

Wow. Wish I had had that experience in Tokyo. The old bags in my area would have coshed a child over the head to get to the last box of tissues on the shelf, and I saw a guy sweep his arm along a shelf and knock every last pot noodle into his basket. People were stripping the shelves bare, and yet, as I filmed long lines of queues for a newspaper back home that I was writing for, hoping to drum up support and donations, someone punched me in the back of the head. Nice.

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Excellent and comprehensive article, thanks for the useful links, and enough information from each group to know about their approach and learn from their experience. I hope all of us go or keeping going up or volunteering in every way we can, because the government (the central government and sadly some local governments) are badly failing people. It's a massive disgrace that the Japan Red Cross has received so much, and that so little has been handed out to victims and survivors yet, even more that local governments are now trying to strong arm access to funds which were donated because people thought it would go direct to the victims themselves. Paternalistic or corrupt government is rearing its head.

The only severly dysfunctional thing I see is the stubborn insistence on everyone having to have the same or noone gets anything. Okay, in normal times, fine. But when distribution networks are totally shot and things are donated so by definition there won't be total uniformity, refusing things because it's not the right number is just bonkers. Some value systems work in some situations, but this is a blaring example where a custom needs to be tossed, and pussyfooting around it is really not helping a lot. It might have worked in a very small, pre-industrial community, but Hello! Things have moved on. Time to adjust! There's a serious need for some straight talkers in the NGO's to face this issue head-on and stop pandering to some supposedly culturally unique ways of doing things. It's like when no-one can go home until the boss packs up, or when a school tells a foreign parent to tell their child to bring Japanese food to school in their bento because it's got to be the same as all the other childrens'. This would be "third world" food that teachers have judged upsetting to "the rest of the students' " sensibilities.

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I just wanted to throw one more NPO out there, and one that is often overlooked: JEARS (Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue Support) http://jears.org/ or http://www.facebook.com/AnimalRescueJapan?ref=ts

They have been working the last 6 months to get the animals out of the various disaster areas, including the exclusion zone, and also take in animals that owners cannot properly care for right now due to the disasters. Besides homing animals and building shelters from scratch, they also still do regular food drops into the exclusion areas to help keep those left behind alive.

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It is encouraging to see the commitment of many NGOs to stay for the long term . . . HOPE International Development Agency is happy to be in the company of the organizations featured in the article. We are also very pleased to support and work in partnership with many Tohoku based organizations and newly formed groups such as IVY ( International Volunteers of Yamagata), Ishinomaki 2.0, OGA for AID, and many others who are making a difference on the ground.

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oh forgot to say I am Lowell with HOPE-JP

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Great article--thanks for spreading the word. In fact, if the last 6 months show anything it is the ordinary Japanese, from a country that has very little history of volunteering, has in fact stepped up and helped out. It is great to see. The more people know how much as been done the more others will be willing to help. Thanks for the article!

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I want to put in a pitch for Habitat for Humanity Japan. They offer lots of opportunities to volunteer and a long track record of building/rebuilding. This fall, they are planning to rebuild through simple house repairs and distribution of Home Starter Kits, with items needed for starting a new home. They bring to Japan deep knowledge of disaster response work from Habitat for Humanity International, in a way that is culturally appropriate and sensitive to local sensibilities. Check them out at: http://www.habitatjp.org/enblog/2011/09/DRSeptemberEN.html

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Habitat for Humanity Japan's over 300 volunteers have been very active with rebuilding programs, and is working in partnership with All Hands Volunteers in Ofunato and Rikuzentakata and PEACEBOAT in Ishinomaki.

To volunteer with Habitat for Humanity Japan (cleaning and repairing homes for disaster victims): contact them at: Tel. +81-(3)-5775-7438. Email: rebuildtoday@habitatjp.org

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The acknowledgement of Louisa Rubenfien's insights about volunteering in Japan ended up at the end, but I had intended to acknowledge her at the beginning as well, since Louisa's observations about Japanese volunteering were a n important impetus for this article! Tish Robinson

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