By Mari Seto | Program Team
As we welcome the new year, we have exciting updates from two of our partners that received grants from GlobalGiving’s Tsunami and Earthquake Relief!
Association for Aid and Relief Japan (awarded $500,000)
Since 3.11, AAR Japan has continuously been providing support for people with disabilities in Fukushima. AAR Japan set up many facilities where they provide working opportunities for persons with disabilities. Some of the funds contributed to repairing and reconstructing these facilities, so that workers can work comfortably.
Another major focus for AAR Japan has been to create an environment to maintain mental and physical health of the people living in temporary housing complexes and subsidized housing. They have organized social events for towns and communities, and overnight field trips for children. As days that the evacuees spend in the temporary housing complexes become longer, it is important to reduce the stress among the communities. Creating an opportunity where people can bond will help the community grow bigger and stronger.
With the funds you helped provide, AAR Japan also installed playground equipment and delivered bottled water to nurseries and kindergartens in Fukushima. For more updates, learn from here!
ETIC. (awarded $500,000)
Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities (ETIC.) is an organization that sends young aspiring leaders to Tohoku, where they can help the local leaders to grow their business or organizations. As of June 2013, they selected and sent 157 fellows to work in Tohoku.
Fellows are recruited through an online website, and ETIC. received 454 applications to date. After the Fellows are selected, they go through an intensive training process, and later they are sent to projects where the Fellows are matched based on their past experiences and skills.
Fellows are placed in various locations throughout Tohoku. For example, Akane is placed in Kesennuma, where she manages the logistics for a regional energy development project. Shiro is located in Onagawa, where he helps to revitalize local businesses like hotels through his past experiences of sales and marketing. Yuya is managing the tourism projects in the city of Kamaishi City in Iwate Prefecture. Fellows’ work have been widely popular among the local communities, and the demands for their work are increasing in Tohoku.
ETIC.’s work is widely popular in Tohoku, and they plan on continuing this program for the coming years. Responding to the needs from the local community, they are expanding their plan from “200 Fellows in 3 years” to “300 fellows in 5 years.” They are also planning on focusing on “innovative” projects that can be expandable to other areas, to revitalize Tohoku local businesses and communities. To read more about their updates in the future, learn from here!
We’d like to thank you again for your overwhelming support for the past two years and 10 months. Although there is less news coverage about the aftermath of earthquake and tsunami, there are still people who struggle every day to recover what they had before 3.11. GlobalGiving is committed to supporting long-term recovery of the Tohoku area, and we are thankful that you are too.
By Mari Seto | Project Team
By Britt Lake | Director of Programs, GlobalGiving
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When a disaster strikes, recovery efforts led by people who live and work in affected communities are often overlooked and underfunded. GlobalGiving is changing this reality. Since 2004, we've been shifting decision-making power to crises-affected communities through trust-based grantmaking and support.
We make it easy, quick, and safe to support people on the ground who understand needs in their communities better than anyone else.
They were there long before the news cameras arrived, and they’ll be there long after the cameras leave. They know how to make their communities more resilient to future disasters, and they’re already hard at work. GlobalGiving puts donations and grants directly into their hands. Because the status quo—which gives the vast majority of funding to a few large organizations—doesn’t make sense.
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