Ninth-term participants in the “Nissan-NPO Learning Scholarship Program” began their activities in July. The participants are approaching the half-way point of their activities which will go until the end of next February. This report covers visits to the activity sites of two ninth-term participants, and their pre-activity orientation and activities.

Building experience

Hiromi Kuwana is currently majoring in international education at graduate school. She is researching education aimed at a society in which people of different cultural backgrounds can live while respecting and valuing each another. In graduate school, Kuwana often thought about the differences between countries, and she applied to the Nissan-NPO Learning Scholarship Program hoping to build experience and learn about issues affecting the environment around her and what she could do to address those issues.

Appreciation of discussions at orientation

At Children’s Fund of Kawagawa, where Kuwana is currently doing an internship as a scholarship participant, it appears that she highly appreciates the orientation that she underwent with other participants before going to the NPO. Sachiko Yoneda, program director and head of admissions, comments, “The activities of the Children’s Fund of Kawagawa are unparalleled activities, and there is no direct contact with the parties involved, so we spend time on the orientation.” When scholarship participants are accepted as interns, their courses of action are jointly decided based not only on group explanations, but also discussions with the participants from the perspective of “what kind of experience will promote their growth,” while paying close attention to “what is expected of them.”

In late June on the day of the orientation, Kuwana, who had never done an internship before, appeared to be little bit nervous. Yoneda greeted her with warm smiles, however, and an amiable and relaxed meeting got underway. During the orientation, “What is an NPO?” was discussed using a whiteboard and materials, and the organization of Children’s Fund of Kawagawa was covered in an easy-to-follow manner. Next, Yoneda politely explained how the Children’s Fund of Kawagawa came to be established, mixing in some of her own experiences in raising children. Hearing from an actual mother about “places” where mothers raising children can relieve stress and receive encouragement was convincing and aroused sympathy. During the orientation, Kuwana actively asked questions and frequently nodded strongly in response to Yoneda’s remarks.

Kuwana’s thoughts following orientation

This will be my first internship, and it will be an internship at an actual NPO, which I have been interested in for a long time. Before going to the orientation, I didn’t have much of an idea of what was awaiting me, and I felt like I was gazing at the internship from far away.

However, after actually hearing about the internship, the thing I felt the most and the thing that stuck in my mind was “approach everything diligently as a learning experience.” This will be an experience that allows me to not simply look at the world from afar, but to take action myself.

Recently there has been a lot of information available about NPOs and the type of things that they do. With the information on the outside, however, it is not possible to learn about the actual process of turning ideas into actions. The bigger an NPOs gets, the more that one looks only at its current status, and the less one pays attention to the process of how it got to where it is. Even though I had a motto of building my own experience, I realized that I had been forgetting what was behind the current state of things.

What got me interested in doing an internship was that I tried looking for a job and people at companies asked me if I was able to balance my own interests and the commercial interests of the company and separate my feelings. Even if you have ideas, if you just think them, you will not be able to accomplish anything. In terms of vocations, do I want to be a teacher or a businessperson? In terms of my involvement, would I be staff or a volunteer? I was given a chance to seriously think about how to give shape to my ideas. The orientation thus allowed me to get my grounding by allowing me to truly see the process of how the minor actions of individuals have led things to be the way they are now. I could see the significance of not commercialism, but giving ideas shape in today’s society, what types of problems exist, and reconciling one’s actual thoughts with what one has been through. At the same time, I was once again able to feel the importance of accumulating major actions as well as small efforts. I thus looked back on the things that I have done until now without regret and recognized that they were part of building up my experience. Based on this, I took a positive approach to thinking about the efforts I will make going forward.

I will not be satisfied with just experiencing an internship, but I would like to experience the mechanism of an NPO firsthand and systematically gain an understanding of NPOs. Furthermore, I will be constantly thinking about how I can change, and utilize the experience in my life, and I will always be true to my feelings. I would also like to make the experience a part of me and going forward gain the strength to initiate actions.