Shinmachi

CODE: NICE-24L-SH17

Work:

Visiting the local Child center and kindergarten, volunteers play with local students and kids. For example, playing game, helping their homework etc. Supporting B.D. activities Flower Road project (Watering flowers, maintaining flower on the road). Joining in some kind of local events which BD organizes.

Accomodation and food

Staying in local apartment house. Share room with other volunteers. Shower room in each rooms. Volunteers need to prepare for breakfast by themselves. Lunch and dinner are usually cooked by themselves, sometimes provided from the local.

Location and leisure

Tokushima City, capital of Tokushima Prefecture, has a population of about 260,000. The city is in northern Tokushima Prefecture where the Yoshino River and its tributaries create a delta.

Project hosted by

This project is actively working for SDGs 4 (Quality Education), SDGs 11 (Sustainable city and Communities) organized together with a local NPO, Bizan Daigaku (B.D.) since 2019. They organize short term workcamps with NICE from 2013 and have many types of projects, one of the projects started visiting a primary school/ kindergarten this year in Tokushima city. There is a kind of problem that the children who live in countryside face to have few opportunity to communicate with foreign people compared with city because of the lack of number of foreigners. They want to change the situation and activate both of children and the situation of education for cultural exchange through having such a local activities with volunteers.

Directions to meeting point

Additional comments

Study theme: Volunteer have opportunities to communicate with local people, to join local events a lot.
Other activities: Awa Odori Festival on August, Exchange parties, experiencing Japanese culture, etc. Join the local events etc. Sightseeing, short trip (hot springs, famous places here).
Other: The first/ last 2 days are On Arrival/ Evaluation Seminars in Osaka.
Language: English and Japanese. A few locals can speak English. When volunteers communicate with children, mainly language is Japanese.