Hands On Tokyo Youth Impact Project

With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting everyday life, we hope you and your loved ones are in good spirits and health.

This is a challenging time for us and we have been adapting quickly and doing everything possible to sustain daily operations, create innovative projects and provide service to our community, while also keeping our partners and volunteers safe.

Given current circumstances and the related uncertainty, our “in person” activities are suspended until the end of this year. However, we have designed and launched various online volunteer programs with several of our community partners. Some of the online volunteering projects where our youth are especially engaged are online motor development classes with disabled children and online English conversation sessions with children’s homes. In addition to this we have prepared online learning materials to facilitate and make online learning fun for the children. Our youth volunteers are key to our online programs planning as they have the digital innovative skills to improve our online program capacity.

While our youth volunteers are utilizing and developing their technical skills as well as the ability to innovate projects during a difficult situation, they will continue to engage in the following:

• Develop educational materials, recreational materials and video content for our community partners in need.
• Design their own project of interest, plan for the project, decide the fund allocation along with fundraising activity.
• Develop PR content for Hands On Tokyo’s activities to make our work visible in the broader community.
• Develop project directly aligned with COVID situation based on the interest of youth leaders (Care packages and messages for hospitals and welfare facilities working with COVID patients, art projects for children, etc.)

We have started virtual bi-weekly information sharing sessions for our high school and college groups to engage, motivate and empower our youth volunteers. These sessions will continue to give a fresh perspective to implement digital content and online volunteering in place through their innovative ideas and program planning skills.

Even after it is seen as safe to offer in-person projects again, we plan to continue these new projects in addition to the in-person activities that we provided before COVID-19. We will continue to help expand the opportunities to allow students to learn the skills, experiences and have resources to make a positive impact on the community.

Here are some Voices from our youth leaders sharing their most memorable experiences while planning and executing their own projects.

“One of the most memorable experiences that I had was when I had the opportunity to organize the Hands On Tokyo’s Charity Concert back in high school. The concert involved students from various high schools and was a great success with over 200 people attending the event. The most rewarding fact was that we were able to use the money we raised through the event to buy paint, which were used to paint the walls of the children's homes ourselves. Including this experience, I had many wonderful opportunities through Hands On Tokyo and I hope to continue being a part of it.”

“My most memorable experience is when I taught English to children at a children's home. I regularly visited the same children home every month with fellow youth volunteers and we played with the children and helped them learn English. It was always fun to interact with these children but it was particularly fun when we decorated Christmas cookies together. I still vividly remember how excited the children were and how they were squealing with laughter and it always makes me happy.”

All of the work we do would not be possible without the support from you, our donors. Through your generosity we will empower even more of the youth, and together continue to make a difference in our community!

We wish everyone's safety and health during the unprecedented situation.

Please stay safe!

First of all, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to our donors and supporters of the Youth Impact program.

Since our last report we have been innovating some of our projects and creating new projects to serve our community to the best of our ability during the COVID-19 outbreak, while also keeping our partners and volunteers safe.

We have started to have virtual meetings with children and volunteers online. For example, recently we started to hold live motor development classes with disabled children and live English conversation sessions with children’s homes. In addition to this we have prepared written learning material that we can incorporate into the lessons. These types of projects are important, because they give a chance for the children to interact with our volunteers and know that they still care about them.

Another new project is that, through our talented youth volunteers, we have started creating recorded video style activities for English learning and exercise/stretching routines. It is especially helpful for care workers, because we can create custom content to fit their needs, all while giving them an extremely well-deserved break.(During COVID-19 children’s homes and other children organizations workers have experienced a substantially increased workload)

Currently, our student members are also proposing/planning youth led projects like:

• Contributing to appreciation gift baskets for medical workers
• Assisting children’s homes with the children’s homework (we are looking into subjects like math and Japanese)
• Helping the homeless community in the inner city

We are also planning projects to carry out once it is deemed safe to gather after the COVID-19 situation. For example:

• Beach cleanup project
• Creating University accessibility maps for disabled people
• Youth charity concert

Here is a quote from a Youth Impact member who designed and carried out his own project:

“Hands on Tokyo Youth Impact has broadened my view of my own country. It has helped me understand more of situations in Japan and as both a project and group leader it has been an extremely valuable opportunity. I have had the pleasure to be the president and vice president of my school’s Youth Impact club in Tokyo. Meeting many people and giving back to the community has given me a lot of pride and experience. They have many volunteering opportunities and events to attend so I highly recommend everyone to volunteer!” -Youth Impact Member

We are sending thoughts out to all those who have been affected by, or are vulnerable to the COVID-19 outbreak. We are hoping for a swift and steadfast de-escalation of the what could turn into a possible pandemic. We are also letting all our community partners and amazing volunteers know that we care about them in this trying time.

All of the work we do would not be possible without the support from you, our donors. Through your generosity we will empower even more of the youth, and together continue to make a difference in our community!

We wish everyone's safety and health during the current COVID-19 outbreak.