Unleash the Potential of Young Changemakers

• We are the Change, the first in-person gathering of Youth Venture was held in four years, on August 20^th, 2023. App. 50 youth and 30 adults participated. The half-day session included (a) presentation by the 4 YVers who are in action or just finished his/her one-year action period as Yvers, (b) 4 separate sectional discussions facilitated by the YVers involving adult participants on each agenda such as “Young Carers”, under-age youths who are imposed upon taking care of their parents or siblings over school work and missing elements in current Japanese education, (c)Discussions on the current Japanese education facilitated by one of the YVers’parent and Director of Ashoka Japan, involving over 20 adults in business and nonprofit areas.

• During FY2023, we held 3 YV panels and 6 new YVers selected. The newly selected 6 YVers include 16 year-old Hayato who developed delicious allergy-free cookies collaborating with pediatricians, motivated by his experience watching his parents’ struggle with his brother with serious food allergy. Yuna is also a 16 year-old who invented “Myanmar Karuta” board game that enables the players to learn the real life of average people in Myanmar while having fun. Upon returning from Phnom Penh to Japan she witnessed how indifferent her Japanese classmates are to what’s happening outside Japan and that frustration motivated her to invent this board game. Both Hayato’s cookies and Yuna’s board game are spreading throughout Japan. 

• YVers are “rare species” who are app.one out of 120,000 high school students in ratio in Japan. The common denominator they have is the broader experiences and wider perspectives than average mono-culture Japanese have and some of them choose to enter US/UK colleges upon graduation. We have addressed the talent of changemaking they manifest being the talent/skills of the new era since 2010 but it still is not broadly accepted in Japan. The core of educational disciplines stresses obedience slighting creativity and independent thinking. We plan to identify high schools in Japan that share similar vision as Ashoka in FY2024 to collaborate with them.

Links:

• https://www.ashoka.org/ja-jp