Food Safety-net for Okinawa

  Developing an effective and safe process to distribute food to large numbers in a short period of time requires repeated testing, flexibility with team members, and good communication with all stakeholders (staff, volunteers, and recipients). Because of the nature of the pandemic there were ongoing concerns about exposure to the virus as well as uncertainty how long our state of emergency would last. This uncertainty created challenges in deciding how long to provide support to an individual and at what interval. 

  With regards to Okinawa, conducting distant operations separated by a body of water is logistically extremely complex. We have experience providing aid in times of disaster in both Tohoku (Northern Japan) and Kumamoto, Kyushu. In both cases we could use our own logistics to move aid to the affected areas. In Okinawa we had to rely on ocean transportation to move aid to the prefecture. Moreover, we had no warehouse space to store or aggregate local donations. Each time we conducted operations we had to bring the whole show to town in order conduct our distributions over a limited number of days.

  The Okinawa Projected proved you could ask recipients to take action and they would respond

• In February, March, and April the percentage of recipients supporting the food drive was nearly 90%.
• In December we distributed 1,331 paper questionnaires to recipients. We provided a pre-paid envelope for them to return the filled out questionnaire. To date we have had 527 responses, which is a 39.5% return rate and far beyond what we expected.
• In April we conducted simultaneous box packing evolutions in two different cities packing 2,520 boxes. On the same day, we conducted three direct distributions in three different cities reaching 900 families. The following day conducted three additional distributions in three cities to 420 families.

Links:

• Usagamisore