Hands On Tokyo Youth Impact Project

Hello Youth Impact Supporters,

 Thank you for your generous support for Hands On Tokyo`s Youth Impact. Our program has continued to grow and the number of students participating in the 27 monthly programs offered on our website and Youth Impact specific projects has steadily increased. The increase is in large part because of recruitment efforts, endorsement from University academic departments and students networking amongst themselves.

The major goal of Hands On Tokyo's Youth Impact program is to connect young volunteers to our community partners. Youths learn about the needs of our community and understand how to make a positive impact through various volunteering activities. We have many repeater youth volunteers who understand and emphasize the need of consistency in volunteering with the same demographic to build meaningful relationship and have positive impact. We are really proud that our youths are committed to volunteer with us regularly to build these relationships to empower our community in need.

The unique aspect of the youth Impact that has made the program more desirable to students is the youth volunteers who have significant experience with a particular community partner (children`s homes, senior citizens, special needs individuals, or a combination of our community partners) can not only lead the project, but also get involved in project planning process. The youth centered program we offer allows them to create their own projects while learning about the needs of respective demographics. While we support our youth to acquire the leadership and management skills, we also provide mentorship for them to understand various strategies and techniques necessary to design meaningful projects for our community. We ultimately aim to have a successful model where youth are trained to implement their learning and skills to mentor other younger youths to develop their own projects.

Let us introduce you few episodes of some of our youth led projects here.

As a part of regular English learning project for visually impaired individuals, our youth volunteers designed a practical learning program on counting money and making purchases. They designed different textures on each dollar to help students with visual impairment to identify a dollar’s value and count easily.

In English lessons with our special needs and under-privileged children, our youth volunteers have used arts facilitation ideas to connect with and teach our children. They helped children express themselves creatively through painting arts and communicate with new people. Please check the pictures below!

In addition to all the regular volunteer projects with special needs individuals and under-privileged children, we continue to support the LIVES Food Truck and Youmewe`s Designing Artists Academy. We recruited 7 students from Youth Impact to support summer art day camp (12^th-20^th August) hosted by Designing Artists Academy to support under-privileged children living in various childcare facilities because of poverty, abuse, neglect and other consequences of their families.

For more information, please check Designing Artists Academy page on GlobalGiving (https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/designing-artists-academy/).

For more information about the LIVES Food truck, please visit our LIVES Food Truck global giving page: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/lives-food-truck/

Hands On Tokyo is very delighted that our Youth Impact team are leading our mission while growing and developing their own personalities and skills. All of the progress we have made so far with our youth team would not be possible without the support of our donors and sponsors. We are grateful that you have chosen our project to invest in, and we will continue to work hard to engage more youths to make difference in our community!

Hello Youth Impact Supporters,

 Thank you for your generous support of Hands On Tokyo`s Youth Impact. This spring has been very busy for the Youth Impact team. In addition to all the regular volunteer projects with special needs individuals and vulnerable children, we continue to support the LIVES Food Truck and Youmewe`s Designing Artists Academy. We are looking forward to updating you on all of these projects in this report.

 Volunteering with our community partners remains at the heart of the Youth Impact program. It is here that our students learn how to assist and empower our community partners. Our repeat student volunteers often note that consistently volunteering with the same demographic has helped them to cultivate meaningful relationships with communities we serve and has taught them the tangible, positive impact of volunteerism. Hands On Tokyo is really proud that our students have internalized this message and are committing to volunteering regularly. We hope that you can take pride in them too.

 As for topics we are teaching in class-we have focused on teaching practical lessons such as: reading clocks, exchanging money for goods, learning about world cultures. In addition, we always make time for the students to get creative. Our St. Patrick`s craft and painting were a class favorite. We hope you enjoy the picture from our classes.

 On a different note-the LIVES Food Truck has made some very important strides. For just a gentle reminder of what the LIVES Food Truck is- it is a food truck that employees individuals with mental and physical disability. Our special needs workers prepare, cook, and serve the food with the assistance of student volunteers. We believe that this model represents not only inclusivity and empowerment of differently abled people-but also what a collaboration between special needs individuals and students could be.

 We are proud to say we have made tangible strides concerning this project. As of April 2019, we have started starting selling around 80 lunches per week-all of which are prepared by our paid special needs staff, Hands On Tokyo, and student volunteers. You can catch us at Meiji University`s Izumi Campus on Thursdays and Showa Jyoshi University in Sangen-Jaya on Fridays. Additionally, generous donations have helped us ensure that special needs employees are paid the Japanese minimum wage-1,000yen per hour. If you are interesting in learning more about this projects and ways to support it, I encourage you to check out our global giving page (https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/lives-food-truck/).

 Finally, I wanted to touch quickly on our collaboration with Designing Artists Academy, our summer art day camp for children living in institutions because of poverty, and abuse and neglect from family members. The camp will run from August 12^th to August 20^th. Each day children will get to experience different creative methods: photograph, jewelry making, t-shirt decoration, painting, and many others.

 We have recruited 7 students from Youth Impact to support the camp as mentors or artists. Our volunteers` ages range from sophomores in high schools to seniors in college. We are really proud of the diversity of our volunteers, and also the interesting ways they will contribute. Our student artists will be leading cupcake decoration, ceramics, and mural painting. The other four will be mentoring our vulnerable children-encouraging the campers to express themselves through art and most importantly, create a positive relationships with the children. For more information, please check our Designing Artists Academy page on GlobalGiving (https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/designing-artists-academy/).

 We want to say a big thank you again to our donors. Since the renewal of the Youth Impact program in 2017, we have evolved significantly. We hope that every time you read one of our reports that you are able to see that as well and note all the ways we have used your donations to educate young people in Tokyo. We look forward to updating you again in three months time and thank you again for your support. We hope you will consider investing in us again.