Childcare Support at Disaster-Stricken Tohoku

Dear GobalGiving Donors to Kirarin Kids,

Thank you very much for supporting NPO Kirarin Kids Childcare Support (KKCS) in
Rikuzen Takada City, Iwate Prefecture. Three people have been operating to
sustain their activities, which came to win a Childcare Support Award from the
Yomiuri Newspaper in November 2011. The DSIA in cooperation with the Niiza
Childcare Support Network (NCSN) is trying to build the capability of the NPO
KKCS in order to have them serve a bigger area of Iwate Prefecture. We are
hoping that they can develop themselves to become the center of childcare
support in the disaster-stricken Iwate area which requires capability to cope
with very unusual children's and parents' (or parent's) psychological
conditions. A few professors from Sophia University in Tokyo expressed their
willingness to give special training or talks on their specialization in
Rikuzen Takada, so that three people in the KKCS can develop the basic
capability to judge about difficult conditions of children. The original
donation to the DSIA from the GlobalGiving finances these professors to travel
to Rikuzen Takada. In order to give more concrete training of childcare support
to KKCS people, I have been trying to raise money to develop a system of
training, so that NCSN can give training to KKCS people. Now, the Japan Disaster
Relief Fund Boston (JDRFB) in Boston informed me to support this activity. The
JDRFB support enables the KKCS to hire a few people to create some extra time
for NCSN people to receive pragmatic training and even conduct administrative
works for them. We will be discussing the details in the remaining period of
this month how much and how we will implement, given the present financial limitation.
The NCSN is now operating in a new, but a very small space as pictures show,
but it seems they will have a decent-size space in a public building, according
to a new city plan for redevelopment, though it may take for a while before
they will move to a new place. Supports from you and JDRFB will be an enormous
help to build their capability to become an excellent child-care center in a
difficult condition of the disaster-stricken Iwate prefecture. Thanks to your
support, we start seeing a little bit of hope to provide support for the KKCS
to develop themselves to become an excellent center of childcare support in
Iwate Prefecture.

Links:

• Kirarin Kids Homepage