Sunday, February 14, 2010

PERSONNEL TRAINING: Organizational Development II – Risk Management

We held our regular personnel training for APFS staff and volunteers.
This time’s topic was “Organizational Developmetn II – Risk Management”, so we invited Ms. Mika Nakahara, the representative of the NPO called Risk Management Office.


Ms. Nakahara told us about the risks of NPOs, and the merits-demerits faced by them.


What’s more, since this year APFS is aiming to aquire legal status as an NPO, we were warned about possible problems, such as volunteer insurance or protection and management of personal data.


By having supported countless foreign residents, we managed to form a trustful relationship with most of them. At the training, we were confirmed that we have to manage risks carefully in the future too, to be able to support many more people in various ways,


Finnally, we would like to express our gratitude to Ms. Nakahara for providing us with such a good chance for learning!


* Our personnal training is sponsored by the Daiwa SRI Fund.


Share Meeting “Multicultural Society as Seen by Foreign Residents”

At our share meetings, foreign residents have a chance to share their thoughts and feelings about their problems concerning life in Japan.



This was the 6th time in FY2009, and we chose the very broad topic of “Multicultural Society as Seen by Foreign Residents”, but still we manged to share our experiences and thoughts in a very relaxed atmosphere as always.


Since most of this time’s participants were from the Philippines, first we talked about the cultural differences between the Philippines and Japan.


Participants mentioned different aspects of faith, television programmes, speech patterns or other ways of showing respect and finally care homes as a form of elderly life.


Additionally, the topic of prejudice (stereotyping) by Japanese towards foreign residents was also raised.


For example, if some finds a bag of trash violating selective guidelines, in many cases foreign residents are blamed “because they are foreigners”. Occasionally, such untracable trash is intentionally brought in front of their homes.


To eliminate such prejudice against foreigners, we have to focus on communitation with Japanese nationals at work or through participation to community events. According to some opinions, it is also important to let others know that there are also foreign residents like us.


However, the participants basically believe in the saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”, so some of them even said “If you live in Japan, you should adapt to the Japanese. If you cannot take it, maybe you had better go home to the Philippines.”


At first these words may seem harsh, but we must not forget that it is the opinion of people who have been living in Japan for more than ten years successfully. At this share meeting, we felt lucky to hear such meaningful words.




* We receive grants from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for our share meetings.


Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Volunteers Desperately WANTED!!!

We are constantly looking for new volunteers who would help us with our activities!



We welcome anyone who is interested in supporting foreign residents in Japan. We especially need people who can work with computers or come to our office in Oyama, Itabashi on a regular basis on weekdays. We also welcome students without any social experience, so please feel free to contact us if you are interested! We are confident that you can gain many things in our office you could experienece nowhere else!


If you come, you can participate in the following working processes:
・ addressing newsletters etc. to members
・ helping with events such as symposiums, parties etc.
・ translating various kinds of documents
・ administrative work such as answering calls or data input
・ upgradiing our BLOG and homepage
・planning and carrying out outreach activities towards foreign communities


<About translation>

Since our activities target foreign residents, translation of a wide range of documents is always necessary.
Not only English, but translation of other languages such as Tagalog, Burmese, Chinese, Korean, Bengali etc. is also important. You may engage in voluntary translation even at home, so please let us know if you feel interested!


<Emergency recruit>

At the moment, we are building our database, so a large amount of data input is required. If you could come to the office at least once a week for a couple of hours on weekdays, please help us!


<We also welcome volunteers with working experience!!!>

We warmly welcome people who are/were already in epmoyment and would like to make use of their knowledge or experiences and skills at APFS. Specifically, we are looking for volunteers who could help us with PR activities such as web/grahpic design, editing, preparation of press releases, and maintenance of IT equipment, IT network construction etc. Since foreign resident support is seriously lacking in Japan, there are many-many tasks APFS has to acomplish. Please contribute to the globally developing civil society with your professional skill! We are waiting for you!