Disaster Response Japan Project #23853

Japan Kyushu earthquake response

by IsraAID

Project Report | Oct 13, 2016
Yoga for Resilience

By Mayumi Yoshida | Country Director Japan

Yoga Japan

On September 27^th, JISP held Yoga sessions at Higashimachi Primary school in Kumamoto City for the children with special needs, their parents and teachers. In the first session, Ms. Ohtaki, JISP’s specialist on post-disaster psychosocial care and a Yoga instructor offered a Yoga session to 9 parents and 4 children from Higashimachi elementary school in Kumamoto. In the second session, Ms. Ohtaki also offered Yoga sessions to the Nakayoshi Class(a class for children with special needs) a total of nine children. This was the second time that JISP had offered Yoga class to these children, and they seemed to be more focused and comfortable this time, and the second grade children were even able to perform meditation! After the session, the children felt much more relaxed and even performed their own dance and songs. Since the earthquake, there has been additional psychical and emotional burdens on the children and the parents. Through these sessions, the parents, teachers and the children were able to enjoy some relaxing time together and release the tensions that have been accumulating since the traumatic earthquakes. In the future, JISP plans to continue similar Yoga sessions not only for children with special needs but also for the teachers and parents who are placed under tremendous stress due to change of life environment, as a way of stress management and self-care.

JISP Yoga

Yoga for Resilience

Children Doing Yoga

Yoga in Japan

Permalink

Jul 19, 2016
JISP disaster relief activities in Kumamoto

By Samuel Nakahashi | Administrative Manager

Starting with a magnitude-6.5 quake on April 14, a series of major earthquakes have hit the central Kumamoto area of Japan, causing deaths, injuries and widespread damage to the area’s residences and infrastructure. As aftershocks continue, tens of thousands of people have moved into evacuation centers which are doing their best to support the evacuees’ needs.

Japan IsraAID Support program has been actively involved in providing disaster relief activities to the victims of the earthquake. To begin with IsraAID distributed to over 2000 people bananas, water and rice balls etc to people at the Kumamoto East ward city office while surveying the psychosocial needs of people in the districts of Mifune town, Mashiki town, and Minamiaso village etc. Currently, JISP has been conducting the following activities in collaboration with Kumamoto City International Center, and evacuation centers, and primary schools etc.

Child friendly spaces

JISP has been providing child friendly spaces workshops for children at evacuation centers and primary schools. Many of the children are still traumatized from the earthquake and live in fear as the after quakes continue. Currently there is also a lack of space for children to play and release their stress so these workshops enable the children to realize their energy in a positive way. On June 10th, JISP provided Yoga sessions for about 20 children with special needs at Higashi with a professional yoga instructor. These sessions helped the children to move their bodies and release tension that had been accumulating since the earthquake.

PFA and disaster preparedness for Foreigners Living in Kumamoto

In May, JISP provided counseling sessions and psychological first aid (PFA) sessions for foreigners living in Kumamoto. There are about 4000 plus non -Japanese residents that live in Kumamoto, and many of them were at loss as to how to respond to the earthquake. for some of them it was the first time that they had even experienced an earthquake! In addition, many of them fell out of the aid relief networks due to language and religious barriers. In collaboration with Kumamoto City International Center, JISP provided knowledge and skills on how to respond to disasters and how to help others in need through PFA and group facilitation work. In July 16, JISP plans to hodl a disaster prevention training sessions for foreigners on how to understand the mechanisms of earthquakes and how to respond to earthquakes in the future.

We are very grateful for your continuous support. We look foraward to updating you further about our activities in Kumamoto in the following reports.

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.