Report on 1st Introduction to NPO Activities Seminar 2021

2021年9月15日更新

What is Katariba?

At the first Introduction to NPO Activities Seminar for 2021, we welcomed Chie Yanagimoto from the Adachi Base Central branch of the NPO Katariba, which reaches out to children with difficult home environments and other problems that they cannot fix by themselves, providing learning support and a place where they feel safe to be themselves. Ms. Yanagimoto focused on Katariba’s activities and her own reasons for working at Katariba.

According to Ms. Yanagimoto, Adachi Base Central provides a place for growing together with children through not just learning but preparing and eating food together as well as experience programs and career education. The emphasis is on “diagonal” relationships that are different from vertical relationships children form with parents and teachers and horizontal relationships they form with friends. Various people in the local community invests a lot of hope in Adachi Base Central, including programs commissioned by the Adachi Ward authorities.
Today in Japan, one child in seven lives in poverty. Ms. Yanagimoto talked about wanting to continue to connect with children facing a raft of issues, such as household discord, or not being able to go to full-time high school or university, because even if they have the motivation, they lack the economic means.

Outline of Katariba

At the end of the seminar, Ms. Yanagimoto used her career consultant qualification to hold a mini career seminar, teaching us about career theory and planned happenstance, for example. She spoke based on her own experience as well as the theory, which helped me to reframe my future from a positive angle.

Ms. Yanagimoto also explained ways that students like ourselves could get involved with Adachi Base Central, such as internships and volunteering. The seminar was packed with information and passion, including a whole range of positive questions and enquiries from participants. Ms. Yanagimoto even kindly kept chatting to us for an hour afterwards.

Whatever your present situation may be, you can make your future—this is the message from Adachi Base Central to teenagers with their limitless potential. As we struggle with the apparently endless COVID-19 pandemic and the many obstacles it has thrown up, it’s a message that perhaps we all need to hear right now.

(Rinka Yamashima, first-year student, Department of Psychology,
Faculty of Human Life and Environmental Sciences)