LIVES Food Truck "OOPEN"

Thank you for your generous support of the LIVES Food Truck. Your investments have allowed us to significantly expand the LIVES Food Truck and we are so excited to share our updates with us in this report.

As we mentioned in our last post, securing venues to sell our food has been the most challenging aspect of finalizing the Food Truck. We are proud to say we have successfully accomplished this goal. 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.

As of now, our special needs staff have mastered cooking a ratatouille and grilled chicken rice dish. This is a major feat for our disabled employees. All of them came in with very little cooking experience, but were eager to learn. However, as you can imagine, the reality of food industry was much more difficult; learning how to prepare food, make it presentable, all the while interacting with customers and volunteers was, initially, a very daunting hurtle. Our staff had to learn cooking and serving skills very quickly and adapt to new, and often, multilingual environments.

Watching them become more comfortable in their roles as chefs and servers has been incredibly inspiring. We are very proud of the bravery on taking on these new challenges, and we hope that you, our donors, take pride in them as well. We believe that they are an example of the powerful impact training and investing in differently abled individuals can have in our society.  

Twice a week, young people on two college campuses are able to see people with disabilities successfully run a small business. We believe that this helps breaks stigma around special needs people. LIVES Food Truck is proof that disabled individuals can execute various tasks in a professional environment and are fully capable of working within a team. We are so excited that we are able to share this message with young people, as they will help drive the movement of inclusivity forward in Japan.

Now that we have this strong base, we are looking forward to expanding the menu in the future. If you are in Tokyo area, we encourage you to come out on either Thursday or Friday-meet our staff and try our delicious and healthy!

We thank you again for your donations to the LIVES Food Truck. They are essential in helping us sustain and expand our program. Most importantly though, your donations help us to ensure that we can pay our disabled staff Japanese minimum wage- around 1,000 yen. Even if our staff worked at national welfare centers, they would only earn 50 yen per hour. With your support, we can ensure that our staff are compensated ethically and that they are respected as full-fledged employees. We hope that you will consider another investment in us so that we can maintain this payment system. Thank you and we look forward to updating you again in 3 months!

Thank you to our generous donors and supporters of the LIVES Food Truck. Your donations have allowed us to expand in tangible ways. In 2019, we have not only increased the amount of students and employees that work with the LIVES Food truck, but also secured locations to sell our food, are actively collaborating with other NPOs, and cultivated a relationship with a local farmer in Chiba.

 Securing locations to sell our vegetarian food has proven to be the most challenging aspect of the LIVES Food truck. Fortunately, we have been able to partner up with two universities in Tokyo who have helped us to secure a permanent timeslot to sell food every week on their Showa campus in Setagaya-ku. British School in Tokyo, Showa University, and within a year, Temple University will all be on the same campus. We are looking forward to offering students from all three schools healthy vegetarian dishes once a week.

 Meeting this goal is the biggest testament to the LIVES food truck`s legitimacy, and the belief that our disabled employees are fully able to serve food and interact with new customers. We are both humbled and grateful for the university`s faith in us, and we to hope to expose our inclusive model to as many young people as possible.

 Additionally, we have partnered with other local NPOs who specialize in empowering differently abled people. In January, we participated in a winter festival for special needs children and their families, where we served 200 cups of healthy vegetarian soup. We will be selling our vegetarian dishes again at another event in the early spring hosted by Acceptions NPO.

 Acceptions shares our goal of empowering down syndrome individuals and creates powerful inciatives to raise awareness, such as the Buddy Walk on March 31^st in the Shibuya Area. This parade is an unique opportunity for special needs individuals to march with an escort through Tokyo. Additionally there will be vendors and other special events happening throughout the day in Yoyogi Koen where the trail begins. If you are living in Tokyo, we encourage you to participate; there are plenty of volunteer spots on the Hands On Tokyo website and the LIVES Food Truck will also be selling our vegetarian dishes at the event. Did we mention a portion of our ingredients are locally sourced from a farm in Chiba! You will not only be supporting our mission, but support sustainable food sourcing as well.

 We want to say a big thank you again to our donors. Without your support, we would not have been able to begin this journey in the first place. We have grown and showed Japan what an inclusive and collaborative society with special needs people could look like. We are so grateful that you also believed in our vision and decided to make an investment in us. We will be sending regular updates and hope you will consider either meeting us around Tokyo or donating again. Thank you!