2021 Overview
If you are interested in offering volunteer opportunitities to your employees, please feel free to contact Hands On Tokyo office at info@handsontokyo.org.
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■Corporate Programs Overview (Spring - Summer 2021)
By Corporate Program Team
Following a challenging year 2020 due to the sanitary hazard COVID-19 caused, Hands On Tokyo continued to apply rigorous safety measures and make the best of online events and remote volunteering. We would have never been able to pursue our activities without the generous backing of our corporate partners and their continuous enthusiasm for helping the different communities and causes we support.
Here are some of the programs we ran this year with our corporate partners notably Bank Of America, Macquarie, Dell Technologies and American Express. Their funds and precious time were dedicated to different activities such as cosmetic make up, cooking classes, environment awareness courses and English classes.
■Online English Lesson
In collaboration with Macquarie, we ran an online English lesson for children’s home with 7 volunteers. Ice breakers, pictionary games, music playing, naming favorite foods and hobbies and such entertained children. These courses are very popular, giving a touch of international exchange to their everyday life and giving the opportunity to the children to communicate in a different fashion.
■Raise Awareness about Environmental and Wildlife Issues
Dell Technologies participated with children from two children’s homes, in online courses to raise awareness about environmental and wildlife issues with WWF(World Wide Fund for Nature). Through quizzes and drawings, children were taught in a simple fashion about the challenges of preserving wildlife. Animals always being a favorite amongst children, some expressed their wish to work in professions related to animals and were very grateful for this experience.
■Cooking Class
Our corporate partner Bank of America supports various ‘Life Skill Programs’ for children living in children’s homes. There was an online cooking class to prepare youth graduates from children's home when they start living on their own and must tend to their own needs. The Chef, based in Bordeaux, taught the children how to cook a complete Japanese meal through detailed instructions and simple demonstrations. This was not only a cooking class but also a moment of awareness as some children became fond of foods they did not previously like and some were grateful for the daily effort and time of people cooking their meals.
■Make Up Class
As another Life Skill program which Bank Of America supports, an online make up class was offered to youth from children's home, with the support of Yamano Beauty College. The children, who will one day need to live independently, were very enthusiastic about this course, especially the ones wanting to work in that field in the future. They were able to test and practise with different make-up goods, learn make-up tricks, making it a very exciting and useful experience especially for future job interviews. Some children had even voiced their interest in working in the bridal industry, wanting to make people’s weddings an unforgettable moment and offer happiness.
■Handmade Calendars
American Express kindly sponsored a Stay at Home project which consists in making beautiful calendars for a nursing home. In this project, volunteers made handmade calendars for seniors living in elderly homes. The pandemic had indeed heavily affected them, especially the ones affected by dementia and the deterioration of their cognitive function. The seniors could turn pages daily and feel the sense of time, weather, season and such. Up to 140 elderly benefited from this operation, supported by 80 volunteers who took pleasure developing creative ideas with their families including children.
