Sponsor Fellows for Tohoku and Japan's Recovery

As four and half years have passed since the earthquake, the public's interest in Tohoku's recovery began to wane.

To connect Tohoku and young professionals who want to contribute to revitalization profects, ETIC. launched "Tohoku Open Academy" project, a collection of 3-day fieldworks with recovery leaders in the three affected prefectures, Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima.

The fieldworks of the 1st batch has completed in the end of May, in total 20 fieldworks with 134 participants taken place.

After the 1st batch fieldworks, we see actions taken place among the participants. Some moved to local communities. Some prepared to start their own businesses. Some support activities in Tohoku while working in Tokyo.

To further promote their actions, we plan to 1) hold additional workshop and dialogue, 2) collaborate with Social Design Lab. at Rikkyo University to learn social issues in Tohoku deeply, and 3) hold a business plan competition to grant recovery projects in December. These activities will be covered by the fund and sponsorships.

Now we are preparing for the 2nd batch to be held in the near future.

Almost 4 years have passed since the Great Japan East Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Thanks to tremendus support from around the world, ETIC could have recruited 201 Fellows and sent them to 111 recovery projects. As we described in the previous reports, Fellows have made significant contributions to the recovery of Tohoku, where the aging rate is very high and thus the lack of workforce has been one of the bottleneck issues.

About 62% of the ex-Fellows decied to stay in Tohoku to continuously work for recovery. Fourteen ex-Fellows launched their own company/nonprofit.

However, Tohoku is still on a long way to the recovery. A number of leaders need Fellows who work with them as a right-hand person. Therefore, ETIC decided to expand its target for the Fellowship Program from 200 Fellows in 3 years to 300 Fellows in 5 years.

In order to achieve the target, ETIC has renewed its recruiting website to attract motivated young people. We will actively pulicize information and stories on recovery projects with good leaders in Tohoku (we are very sorry that the documents will be written only in Japanese).