Hands On Tokyo Youth Impact Project

We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at last. Not too many people have foreseen that we are still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic situation in 2022 a couple of years ago, however, it seems the community is opening up slowly but surely. 

We are grateful for your continuous support to help us continue addressing the needs of our community. With your support, we will continue to create innovative projects and provide services to help our community transition to “New-Normal” with and beyond COVID-19 crisis. None of our services would have been possible without your commitment and trust towards our organization. We are extremely grateful to have your support through this platform to innovate different types of services to meet the needs of our community. 

Youth Impact Group has been active but flexible to find the right way to interact with different partner organizations to follow the rules of their new life styles -- "Living with COVID-19". We have weekly discussions with high school students to explore innovative ideas to promote volunteerism and encourage our youth leaders to continue serving for the community in the way that makes people comfortable. 

Among many of our Youth led activities, we would like to highlight this project that was planned and executed by members of our Youth Impact Program.

One of our Youth Impact members has brought up in our meeting about this facility commonly called "sagyoujo". Sagyoujo is a place for people with mild to medium level of mental disabilities to come and work every day with simple tasks. The government fianancial support is not enough for the people so at this Mamoriyama Sagyoujo, they bake their own cookies, roast coffee beans, package them in the original designed pouches and sell them at the local city offices twice a week. This sagyoujo also receives orders from companies to stuff several items in the envelopes, put labels on these envelopes, and organize them so the companies can send them off to the subscribers. They are doing as much as they can at this Mamoriyama sagyoujo to provide more financial support for the workers.

Our Youth member had visited this facility prior to our regular meeting and told us that she wanted to raise the awareness in the community about this facility and maybe even promote their baked goods to help their fund raising. As a first step though, Youth Impact members have decided to actually visit the facility themselves and learn more about the reality and the situation that the people with mental disablities who come and work are in. 

Below is the report from one of the active members of Youth Impact program about their visit to Mamoriyama Sagyoujo. 

"Our visit to the Mamoriyama sagyoujo in April taught me a lot of things.  It was a couple minute walk from Shin Daita station in Setagaya-ku, and when we arrived at the location, what used to be an elementary school now converted into this facility, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Walking in, we were greeted by some of the workers who were doing cleaning services in the building, and after going up to the third floor, we met Ito-san, the head of the sagyoujo.  Ito-san gave us an overview of what they did there, showing us the baked goods (which are very good), coffee beans, and packages they produced, and then took us on a tour of the facility.  All the workers were very kind and welcoming, everyone saying hello and waving to us as we walked by.  After our tour, we went down to the schoolyard where Ito-san organized boccia (a game popular among the workers) to play with those from Mamoriyama.  We were organized into three teams, randomly mixing Hands on Tokyo Youth Impact members with workers.  I’d never played boccia before, but after receiving help from my Mamoriyama friends I got the hang of it.  Getting to know these people was a memorable and new experience for me, despite our respective differences, I valued the compassion and friendliness of all of those at the sagyoujo shared with me, and I truly can’t wait to go again." 

-- S.B. Youth Impact High School Member

Hands On Tokyo Youth Impact Program guides young leaders to design, plan and execute their own projects. The Youth Impact members will continue to learn and become leaders who can actually makes a difference in our society. They will know how to focus on problems, come up with the realistic solutions and will be able to execute by accomplishing our Youth Impact projects repeatedly. 

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

Thank you for your continued support and trusting our organization.