Community initiative for safe and welfare town

– case study of Heiancho, Yokohama city

Heian-cho in Yokohama
Heiancho is a residential area inside Yokohama city (one of the largest port cities in Japan) with total 3,500 households living near “Tsurumi-ichiba” station of Keikyu railway. This area was developed before the WWII by reclaiming canals near the sea, and during the era of rapid economic growth (1960s) many apartment houses were constructed for the employees who worked in large factories near the area. Now, it looks calm residential area similar to the other ones around Tokyo. The residents can reach Tokyo city center within 40 minutes if they take Keikyu line, and it takes only 16 minutes ride on a train to arrive at Yokohama station where you can find variety of shopping and amusement facilities. Recently, several high-rise apartment buildings were constructed, so the number of younger families and unmarried people increased in the area, whereas among the old residents there increased aged population as their sons and daughters had grown up and live separately outside the area. In short, Heian-cho is one of the ordinary residential towns around Tokyo with a mixture of new young comers and old residents of aged families.

Activities of Neighborhood Association
In Japan, at most of residential areas, neighborhood associations (chonai-kai or jichi-kai in Japanese words) are organized among the residents. The neighborhood associations in Japan are basically voluntary organizations spontaneously established by the residents to implement community activities such as disaster preparedness, crime prevention, welfare activities, and mutual friendship events. The neighborhood association usually covers several hundred to several thousand households depending upon the size of the area, and although it is considered as a voluntary association, most of the residents feel it obliged to become members and pay annual membership fee and other donation when requested. Throughout Japan, there said to be around three hundred thousand neighborhood associations. Some of them are active, but others are not so. Especially in the city area such as Yokohama or Tokyo, as most of the residents are so busy in their own business or family matters, and human relationship among the community members become much weakened as a result, many neighborhood associations can not attract most of their residents to the activities, and have become less active.

However, it is not the case of Heian-cho chokai (neighborhood association). The association is still much active to implement various social activities and many residents participate actively in those activities and events. It has 2,800 households as members, and it is divided into eight issue-wise divisions and 15 area-wise sections. The followings are the examples of activities or events taken by each divisions;

1) Welfare division: visiting the aged families, long life celebration events for the aged,
2) Environment division: green campaign, measure for abandoned bicycles, measure for illegal advertisement boards, beautification of parks and flower beds
3) Transportation division: traffic safety education and campaign, traffic control at the time of events
4) Fire and Crime Prevention division: patrolling at the time pupils getting out of school, emergency training exercises, management of equipments for disaster and emergency
5) Outdoor light division: maintenance of outdoor security lights
6) Youth division: management of sports day, bringing up boys and girls in a healthy way
7) Women division: management of own activities, supporting activities of other divisions
8) Administration division: management of meetings, public relations, overall management of various events or training

In addition to the above activities by the divisions, the association also implements several events such as Heian Shinto-shrine festival, garbage recycling, great sports festival, walking festival, ball-game festival, bus trip, celebrating the aged persons, and “Sawayaka campaign” (encouraging voluntary actions such as cleaning the area).

Welfare supporting association
The uniqueness and activeness of Heian-cho is symbolized not only by the various activities implemented, but also by the presence of “Heiancho Fukushi-Sanjokai (welfare supporting association)” organized by some of the active residents.

The Fukushi-Sanjokai was established in 1991 and consists of 40 members and 150 volunteers. The primary objective of the organization is to promote social welfare activities in the area. As the neighborhood association has a limitation to provide services only within the members themselves, it was necessary to establish another voluntary organization that can promote self-help activities among all the residents of the area and volunteers coming from outside as well.

At first, the Sanjokai started lunch delivery activity for the aged families in 1992. Once a week, the volunteer staff of Sanjokai prepare lunch box and deliver to the aged or the handicapped who have difficulty to cook. Around 20 to 30 residents are getting the service, and there are 22 volunteer staff. Besides the weekly delivery activity, “eating together” events are also held several times a year.

As the service for the aged residents, the Sanjokai also provides volunteers to the aged people who needs support of gardening, repairing electric appliances, shopping or other everyday necessities. Video-theater events that show old cinemas are also held.

The Sanjokai also implements several activities to support small children and their parents. Once a week, “Heian kids room” is held in a meeting room of “Heiancho community center” constructed by the Heiancho chokai. Puppet show, parent and child physical exercises, free style games, and consultation services for the parents are held for children under school age and their parents. Measuring height and weight of the children by a public health nurse, is also implemented occasionally. Moreover, twice a month on Saturdays, “Heian Video Theater” is held in the community center and sometimes more than hundred children gather.

Apart from safety activities of Heiancho chokai, the Sanjokai also implements crime prevention activities through organizing “Heiancho security network” among the residents and volunteers. They regularly patrol around the area by walk or bicycle, and also watch the street when the pupils finish school and return to their home every afternoon. Besides, they construct information network through telephone among the residents in order to prepare for emergency situation such as natural disaster or severe crimes.

The Sanjokai also coordinates volunteers not only from the area but from outside Heiancho who want to participate in volunteer activities such as helping “Lunch Heian”, “Heian kids room”, or cleaning and maintaining flower gardens in the parks nearby.

Leadership and involvement
Mr. Hidehiko Kasai, the chairperson of both Heiancho chokai and Heiancho Fukushi Sanjokai, explains key principles of their activities.

“In the past, all the community people helped each other for their everyday life. Then, the government (central and local) took the responsibility to provide all the services, and the community people started to misunderstand that they did not have to help the neighbors. However, as the economy of Japan suffers difficulties, the government can not afford to provide all the necessary services to the people. Now, it is necessary for us to take initiatives for protecting our life by ourselves. We can not wait for the government to do something for us. It is not difficult for us to start something new that has not been done by others. Our motto is running at the front. It is necessary to start actions timely. In order to implement various actions required in the community, it is important to find out leaders among the community members and entrust them to manage the activities.”

By Rie Yamada & M. Nagahata (i-i-Network)

Asameshi Syokudo
– A tasty community business for a healthy community -

Introduction
Asameshi Syokudo is a restaurant located in a town called Asamushi, a historical hot spring town along side the sea in Aomori prefecture, the Northern city of Japan. It was opened in 2003 and run by a NPO called Iki Iki Asamushi. ‘Iki Iki’ means lively, active, full of life, in English and the name shows its vision to support community’s well-being.

NPO Iki Iki Asamushi
When Dr. Ichiki returned to Asamushi town from Tokyo and inherited his father’s clinic in 2000, he was shocked with the changes of the town. Compare to his childhood, population and local activities were declined. He made a strategy to renew his father’s clinic in order to better serve the community health, as well as to start a NPO for community development activities.

Health problem in Asamushi
Like many other rural area in Japan, Asamushi has shrinking and aging population. The population is 1877 in 2005, with 783 men and 1094 women. Among them, 892 people are more than 60 years old. There are many elderly women who live alone, as they used to work for the tourism industry. Dr. Ichiki found that their health condition is heavily depending on their eating habit, and many single elderly person do not eat properly. Place to eat with other people with healthy and balanced diet is necessary for their health.

Menu of Asameshi Syokudo
The restaurant is open for lunch everyday except Sunday and serves healthy meals. It has three kinds of menu; 1) Daily special, 2) Weekly special, 3) Special dish called ‘Potato Suiton’. The picture on the left shows a sample of the Daily special, which has main dish, rice, miso-soup, vegetable, pickles and desert. It cost only 500 yen.

The restaurant has a special recipe from Mrs.Moriyama who won the prize from the local food competition. The local food competition was organized in 2003 by the NPO Iki Iki Asamushi. The quality and variety of dishes, which local people particularly grandmas, brought were amazing and shows rich local tradition and love to their own food culture. After the local food competition, the NPO decided to start the restaurant to revive and utilize this food culture for health promotion.

Management of Asameshi Syokudo
In normal days, about 40 people come to eat lunch at the restaurant. Patients and elderly people who visit the clinic, workers in nearby companies and families are customers. The restaurant provides balanced diet with affordable price while being a successful community business. Thus, the management made effort to economize operation, utilize funding opportunities, and improve services in order to attract many customers. At the beginning, the NPO got a funding support from the ‘venture project fund’ by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and it is equipped with second hand furniture and equipment.

It also cooperates with the Ichiki clinic for publicity and feed back among patients. At the clinic, restaurant news and photo of the Today’s special menu is presented everyday. It serves also as a community place, for elderly people to meet with others. When a regular customer does not show up, restaurant staff try to make sure that they are ok. The restaurant also has a lunch box delivery service for those who can not come. “The trust from the local people is essential for successful activities” Ms. Mikami, the general secretary of the NPO said.
The restaurant also creates employment opportunity for local women and men, which is important for community to be sustainable. The NPO employs 8 staff for the restaurant. The staff develop menu, improve kitchen, communicate with customers, and enjoy working.

The NPO Iki Iki Asamushi’s activities have been expanding. In 2005, the NPO started an agricultural farm to produce organic vegetables to be served at the restaurant. The publication of an original recipe book for local food promotion, cooking classes in community school and conservation program of firefly are all started by the NPO with local people’s participation. There are also several joint activities of NPO and the Ichiki clinic, such as ‘healthy tour’. The ‘healthy tour’ package includes health check up at the clinic, programs such as hiking in the local mountains, and balanced diet program at Asameshi Syokudo. In 2006, Dr. Ichiki and Ms. Mikami established a company in order to run the Healthy Inn Asamushi, which is a hotel with 15 rooms and hot spring.

New model for community business
As seen above, the NPO and the clinic work hand in hand for well being of the local community. Through the activities, they try to create a place, where local people can enjoy tasty food, have a fun and feel happy. The entry point was a restaurant which started from careful observation of elderly people’s life and health problems. But as seen above, the activity does not end there, and continues to grow according to local resources and needs. It shows a new model for NPO which try to support community through community business and action. Let us again look at our own community and see what is there and what we can do.

Report by Satoko Kono (i-i-Network)

Facilitating empowerment through SHG management
The case of VVK and SOMNEED at Vishakapathnam in Andhra Pradesh, India


Slum women played drama at a city theater
On July 3rd, 2007, at a theater named “Vishakha Music and Dance Academy”, ordinary women from at the slum areas of Vishakapathnam city, State of Andhra Pradesh, India, performed a drama on the stage in front of more than two hundred audience. They are the member of “Vishakha Vanitha Kranthi (VVK)”, a federation of slum women’s self-help groups (SHGs). VVK was established in 2005 with the facilitation of SOMNEED (a Japanese NGO) under a JICA assisted project called “Creation of new type of producer-consumer relationship and common property resources through the linkage of urban-rural women Self Help Groups” (PCUR-LINK project). The drama that the VVK members played described a brief history of VVK activities. The major topics of the play were; How the condition of SHGs changed after they participated in the project, how the VVK was formed, What they learned from SOMNEED about the management of SHGs and VVK, What were the initiatives took by VVK to acquire legal status, and what are the present banking activities implemented by VVK.
Obviously, it was their first time to perform such a drama in a big auditorium in front of such a large audience. But all the actress from the slum looked very excited and they really enjoyed performing drama to show what and how they achieved throughout the three years of the project period. Before the performance at the theater, the VVK members spent more than 100 hours to prepare the script, to practice the drama, to have rehearsal for getting advice from SOMNEED, and to even reserve the city theater by themselves. It was a part of “Final Evaluation” activities of the project, and in fact, it was a climax of the three year self-reliant actions of the slum women who have been “empowered” by participating the PCUR-LINK project.

Outline of the project
The PCUR-LINK project started in July 2004 as one of the Grass-Root Technical Cooperation Projects of JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). The project duration was three years (July 2004 to June 2007), and SOMNEED (a Japanese NGO based in Takayama city of Japan) is an implementing organization together with its Indian counterpart organization, SOMNEED Trust India. The project purpose is “creation of new type of producer-consumer relationship and common property resources through women SHG empowerment”, and the target groups are the women SHGs at urban and suburban slums in Vishakapathnam city.
Since its establishment in 1993, SOMNEED has been involved in community development activities in the rural mountainous areas of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa States in India. It implemented various activities such as tree plantation, literacy classes, mini-hydro project, and SHG promotion in rural communities. However, in recent years, it witnessed massive migration trend from rural area to urban slums due to the drought hit in rural areas. Most of the migrants start living in the city slum areas, and the slum dwellers have no common property resources that provide a margin to survive. Creating employment opportunities and preventing deterioration of their habitat are pressing agenda.
Having realized the issues described above, SOMNEED took initiative to be engaged in slum areas, and started building relationship with women’s SHGs through a local NGO while having comprehensive research on the condition of those SHGs and their members. The project PCUR-LINK was launched based on such preliminary actions. It aims at improving basic skills of slum women for management of SHGs, establishing new type of producer-consumer relationship, and mobilizing locally available resources.

The slum women changed from “object” to “subject”
Within the three years of the project period, it is a really exciting achievement that the slum women who participated in VVK (SHG federation) have become “subject” of their activities. Now, they can manage all the meetings, savings, and loan procedure according to the rules and regulations settled by themselves. The slum women have true sense of “ownership” in the SHGs and their federation (VVK).
However, it was not easy for SOMNEED to change the mind and attitude of both the slum women and staff of the local NGO who thought “SHGs are recipients of aids and NGOs are the service providers”. It also required much time to develop skills of managing SHGs by members themselves.
The process of evolution of SHGs and VVK can be categorized into four stages;

1) Awakening stage
This is the stage where the slum SHG member became aware of the true meaning of “Self-Help” actions, and start improving SHG activities by themselves. It is said that more than 2 million “Self Help Groups” formed by NGOs or government institutions throughout India. However, most of the SHGs are managed by outsiders – NGO staff or government field workers. They helped SHGs in book keeping, regular meetings, and loan provision from banks. There are very few “Self-Help” groups in its true sense.
In late 2004, SOMNEED took representatives from the slum SHGs in Vishakapathnam to Chennai (the capital city of Tamil Nadu State) where they visited Akshaya Bank. The bank was established 10 years ago by SHG members, and it has more than 1,200 members of poor women and more than fifty thousand US dollars fund accumulated by the members. The SHG members from Vishakapathnam were shocked to know that the slum women of the bank manages everything (savings and credit procedure) without help of outside NGO staff. After coming back from Chennai, the slum women tried to improve their SHG management such as having regular meetings, increasing attendance rate, and recovering bad debts.
SOMNEED did not give any instruction to the SHGs. It stimulates motivation of the SHGs by showing good example of internal fund rotation, encourages them to fix target indicators of SHG improvement, and facilitated them to do their best to achieve the target.

2) Trial and error stage
After establishment of the SHG federation (VVK) in March 2005, VVK members (joined from slum SHGs) started preparing rules and regulations of the federation. It was almost first time for them to discuss something and to reach conclusion thoroughly by themselves, therefore, it took much time to settle the agenda, record the discussion, and come into concensus. Finally, 11 months after the establishment, VVK finalized its rules and regulations consisting of 25 clauses. While discussing rules and regulations, VVK members also tried to start business as a collective action for economic improvement. They visited Hyderabad (state capital of Andhra Pradesh) to observe various markets and shops in order to think what and how to start own business. After that, they started Sari (traditional Indian women clothes) business investing 25,000 rupee ($600). Unfortunately, that business almost failed and they lost their money. The VVK members then realized the importance of having business skills such as cost-calculation and book keeping.
In the process of above trials and errors of VVK, SOMNEED did not give suggestions or advice to VVK unless it was asked to do so. It also provided training opportunities for those who really want to learn management of VVK. Training on basic accounting, and book keeping is arranged by SOMNEED.
When VVK established, there were 7 SHGs joined. However, one year later, it decreased into only 4 groups, as it was hard for some members to improve organizational management capacity.

3) Expansion stage
In April 2006, the first general assembly of VVK was held, and they started recruiting new member SHGs by visiting candidate groups, giving advice for better SHG management, and motivating them to join VVK. As a result, after 5 months, 20 SHGs became members of the federation. At the same time, VVK members tried to acquire formal registration as mutually aided cooperative. It was necessary if VVK wanted to start banking activities. The VVK members prepared necessary documents and submitted to the registration office. However, the officer there caviled for one thing or another at every time they visited, and implicitly requested bribe in order to process the documents. The VVK refused to give any bribe, continuously visited and asked for formal procedure. Finally, after 7 months, they got registration as mutually aided cooperative.
In this stage, SOMNEED did not initiate any activities. All the actions were taken by VVK themselves, and SOMNEED did not even accompany the VVK members who visit the registration office. It only gave advices when asked.

4) Take-off stage
The last thing that SOMNEED focused on for the capacity building of VVK was to train trainers for group management (fund rotation and book keeping). Through three months course, only 4 members passed the final exam and started visiting newly joined SHGs to teach book keeping and fund management. It is one of the indication that VVK will be able to sustain the quality of SHG management by themselves without help of SOMNEED.
VVK also started lending to its members in March 2007. Within one month, it provided loan amounting around 2,000 US dollars from its own fund. Rules and regulations for loan products are settled by VVK themselves. Again, SOMNEED gave only technical training and advice when VVK prepared loan criteria and regulations. Presently, after the PCUR-LINK project finished in June 2007, VVK operates its savings and credit program totally by themselves.

How SOMNEED facilitated empowerment?
It was not easy for the staff of SOMNEED India and its partner local NGO to facilitate initiatives of the slum women. In general, the field staff of local NGO were accustomed to “teach” and “lead” SHGs in their everyday activities. Book keeping, saving accumulation, loan provision, and even calling SHG members to attend meetings were major task of the NGO staff. When the PCUR-LINK project started, SOMNEED asked the NGO staff not to give any help or instruction to the groups unless they are requested by SHGs. Stimulated by exposure tour to Akshaya Bank in Chennai, the SHG members started to try everything by themselves. When the NGO staff visited any SHG meetings, they sat behind the group quietly, and raised hands for seeking permission to talk if they felt necessary to do so. “You should not teach them, and wait until you are asked.” It is one of the most important attitudes for NGO staff if it wants to construct equal partnership with the slum people.
In the process of final evaluation activities held in July 2007, SOMNEED staff reviewed their actions towards SHGs and VVK, and they summarized several key concepts for “facilitation of slum women’s initiative”. Those are;
a) Unless asked, no intervention.
b) Pose question, but do not teach.
c) Believe their capacity, but do not expect.
d) Let them do first, wait, and see.
e) Raise your hands, seek permission, then talk.
f) Set bottom line, and talk such a manner that even 10 year child can understand.

SOMNEED strategy for facilitation
There are some important points in the strategy of SOMNEED for facilitating initiatives of the slum women.

1) Stimulating curiosity
It had a great impact on the women’s motivation that SOMNEED took them to the successful example of SHG federation bank (Akshaya Bank) in Chennai. Showing visible successful cases is a good way to stimulate the curiosity of the people who then take initiative for own action.

2) Setting achievable targets, and praise if achieved
SOMNEED encouraged the SHG or VVK members to settle concrete targets such as improvement of SHG management, criteria for joining VVK, criteria for passing exam of trainers. If anyone can achieve the targets and is praised by others, he or she increases own motivation to do something.

3) Encouraging feedback and sharing information
It was always emphasized by SOMNEED that every and each information should be shared among all the members. Result of exposure tours or any conclusion of VVK meetings were shared and given feedback. It is a minimum condition for sustainable independent management for any organization to share information and have open discussion. Through such practice, SOMNEED tried to produce a new type of sustainable management and leadership of community-based organizations.

Report by M. Nagahata (i-i-network)