Social Entrepreneurs of Japan's Disaster-Hit Areas

Thank you very much for your continuing support!

Hope you had a wonderful summer and ready to welcome the beautiful autumn.

We are very excited to share that WIT and Replus, one of the social entrepreneurs WIT has supported since 2015, will present our progress at the annual meeting of American Public Health Association (APHA) in Philadelphia in November! This wonderful opportunity to share our impact and lessons learned with the larger society beyond Tohoku or Japan was made possible thanks to the passionate collaboration with Keiko, a CBLJ 2016 participant, and Andrea, a CBLJ 2017 participant (CBLJ=Cross-Border Learning Journey, our flagship program). 

At APHA, Replus will present their successful approach to preventive and rehabilitative care for aging adults for the healthier quality of life. If Replus approach is applied on a global scale, this will contribute to a reduction in government spending and encourage physical activity in the aging population. Replus will present at the poster session on November 4th. 

WIT will present our approach to create collaborations across different sectors, regions and coutries to improve the lives of people in disaster-affected communities and beyond. We will discuss how expanding and deepening networks among social entrepreneurs and diverse professionals have contributed to promoting resilient and sustainalble civil society. Our presentation will be on November 5th.

If you happen to be at the APHA annual conference this year, please do let us know! 

We look forward to updating you about how the presentations will go.

With gratitude,

Mio Yamammoto, Executive Director, on behalf of WIT team

Links:

• WIT website
• APHA annual conference

Thank you for your continuing support to WIT and reading our quarterly report! 

We are very excited to announce that a diverse group of selected Fellows -- social entrepreneurs and business leaders from the US and Japan will participate in the 2019 summer Cross-Border Learning Journey (CBLJ) in July. Many thanks to many of you who kindly shared about the program.

If you are interested in learning about social innovation and collaborating on mission-driven projects with leaders across the US and Japan, there is still an opportunity to join us! Please sign up by June 15th to participate in the Cross-Border Learning Journey. You can find details here. The program runs from July 17th to 22nd, and you can join from one day!

To give you a glance of the diversity of the other participants --- Social issues the participating social entrepreneurs are addressing include refugees, climate change, agriculture and fishery, education, community development, QoL for individuals with disabilities, gender equity and more. Business leaders come from HR, CSR, management consulting, urban planning, design and more, who aim to create social impact as well as viable businesses.

From Tohoku, the northeastern region of Japan, SAVE TAKATA, a nonprofit working on the rural community development and education in Rikuzen Takata City, will join as one of the Fellows, as well as exiting WIT social entrepreneurs like Urushi Rocks and Replus. SAVE TAKATA has been working with local people and schools to create IT jobs and provide career education for children since after the Tohoku earthquake. They are eager to collaborate with other US-Japan participants to expand their educational program for local kids who otherwise don't have many career choices and role models.

We are looking forward to update about the progress of the collaboration in our next newsletter!

With gratitude,
Mio and WIT Team

Links:

• 2019 Summer Cross-Border Learning Journey