Hands On Tokyo Youth Impact Project

 Thank you to all our donors and supporters of the Youth Impact program.

 2019 has been another year of meaningful volunteering projects for our students. While our students' leaders continue to learn developing their new projects for the social cause they really care, they have also created a strong bond among their youth peers to inspire each other and get involved in the community. Additionally, our staff has been continuing to connect with local university administration and has been able to establish meaningful partnerships to promote understanding and education.

 The Youth Impact Program has grown and developed because of the students who regularly volunteer, lead our volunteer projects, and also become our key promoters. Without their vocal advocacy and input, the Youth Impact program would not have been taken its shape today.

 In 2019, we had lesser youth created projects as compared to the previous year. This was because of the change in the staff and transition period. Nevertheless, this year too we were able to create youth focused seasonal projects such as an Easter egg hunt and Christmas lesson with our vulnerable children. These projects are the major highlights of youth focused projects every year. These events not only meet needs within the community, but also foster Youth Impact members` creativity and leadership. In the coming year, we hope to give more students the opportunity to create their own original program.

 We would like to introduce the voice of one of our youth leaders to share her experience:

"Hands on Tokyo Youth Impact Program has given me remarkable experiences in both volunteering and project management. In high school, I served as one of the high school board members, communicating to students at my school about volunteering opportunities provided by Youth Impact Program. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to lead a fundraising charity concert at my high school with other youth board members. When I started college, my friends and I launched the college division to continue the practice and spread awareness of volunteering among students at our respective universities. Through my 6 years with Youth Impact Program, I have had the opportunity to participate in many events, including LIVES Tokyo, Day of Service, Taste for Volunteering, etc.

 LIVES Tokyo has been one of the most memorable projects that I have been involved in. For its food truck project, I had the opportunity to partake in the launching process. Furthermore, I was able to gain the experience of organizing a project and meet Ogoda-san, a renowned blind lawyer in Japan, from whom I had much to learn about. Earlier in 2019, I had the chance to volunteer at the food truck for a festival in Ikebukuro.

 In addition to its food truck project, I also volunteered at the LIVES event in September. Participating in both the first LIVES Tokyo event in 2017 and again in 2019, I was able to acknowledge how successfully Hands on Tokyo has been expanding, and the large support it has been receiving. This can be said the same about the Taste for Volunteering, where I had the opportunity to help out the fundraising event and the skit performance to introduce Hands on Tokyo.

 Currently our biggest mission is to recruit more members in our youth impact team, as many of the co-founding members have graduated college, or will graduate soon. At the recent Day of Service, we have succeeded in gathering new junior members from our universities to volunteer at the game booth. In addition, we are currently organizing a networking lunch to introduce about our group and our activities to our juniors interested in volunteering. We hope to continue and expand this college division of the youth impact team, and I personally hope to continue volunteering at Hands on Tokyo even after graduating college."

 We are an organization that prides ourselves on letting the student lead this program. In 2019, we will work hard to engage youth and empower them to be leaders. We hope you will consider investing in them in the New Year as well.

 We wish you a happy holidays and New Year.

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!