Thursday, April 28, 2011

The article from one volunteer (Ms. Ikeda)

In A.P.F.S. , various volunteers join activities. Here is the article of one volunteer.

I’m Yuko Ikeda, doing the volunteer work at A.P.F.S. since November 2010.

The reason why I started working as a volunteer is because I studied about foreigners in Japan when I was a university student. The summer of my third year in college, I visited Nonprofit Organization in Toyota, Aichi prefecture where I was born, and I was so surprised at seeing a lot of Brazilians living in that area. After that experience, I took interested in how many foreign people live in Japan, or why they are in Japan. Then I began to study about them at college. I was being a tutor for exchange students, also doing the volunteer work for Japanese class in my town. After I graduated, I wanted to do something for aliens in Japan since I had lots chance to be involved with foreign residents. Fortunately I found A.P.F.S. and started the volunteer work there.

Now I come to the office once a week. My job is mainly to write up the papers, and to translate Japanese documents into English. I have visited the lawyer with a foreign consulter. Almost all papers are about residence visa status. At first there were lots words which I didn’t know, but gradually I get to understand what they mean and under what situation the foreigners are.

It has been about 6months since I started doing the volunteer work. Working at A.P.F.S makes me think. I realized that it was not easy that people live in the foreign countries. I hope that more Japanese begin to know the situations of foreign residents in Japan. I feel that there are not a lot of things which I can do, but I’d love to do my best as a volunteer.