Adamant Namiki’s Initiative for SDGs: Mid-term Report Meeting on ‘Fro-pro’

By Riyako Namiki, President and CEO

On Dec. 1１, 2021, we held a mid-term reporting meeting on ‘Fro-pro ADNa.’ The project is intended to provide workshops for high school students to acquire skills to realize their goals by getting assistance from college students and other people. To the meeting, we invited three advisers: Kazuo Sato, the mayor of Yuzawa City in Akita Prefecture; Mayumi Oku, a Yokote-based educator who’s aiming to work on education issues beyond the system of schools; and Akiko Tabata, a member of Yokotter, which is a non-profitable organization trying to revitalize Yokote.

In October, Orbray Co. launched ‘Fro-pro ADNa’ in Yokote City and Yuzawa City in cooperation with ‘Fro-pro’ in Akita City. It already offered five workshops. Participating high school students picked up their own projects to solve their communities’ problems and laid out action programs with the assistance from ‘Fro-pro’ members.

Team Wishing to Make Everyone Happy Project

The first group to make a presentation at the meeting was ‘Team Wishing to Make Everyone Happy’ and it comprised four high school students – Hiromu, Yuki, Kirito and Tatsuki. Given that both Yokote City and Yuzawa City have heavy snowfalls in winter, the team discussed the problem of snow shoveling at elderly households and empty houses and proposed an arrangement of volunteer works by high school students.

MRT Project

The second team for presentation was ‘MRT,’ which had Masaya, Ryunosuke and Towa as members. They picked up the issues of decreasing population in Yokote and Yuzawa as well as the disposal of used masks. At a glance, the two issues appear unrelated. It is crucial to discover and spread the regions’ attractions to prevent the drain of population, while encouraging a laundry of used masks and recycling them would help to reduce disposal. Holding workshops to attract local people and give them the opportunities for socializing can resolve the two problems altogether, the students proposed. 

Intellectual Activities Project

The third presenter was Kodai, who thought high school students rarely engage in intellectual activities except school studies. He proposed an opening of a ‘world cafe’ where visitors can discuss problems at hand and enhance intellectual curiosity.  

The three advisers gave frank feedbacks by reflecting their positions and experiences. In response, some of the presenters acknowledged that they failed to have through discussions and flinched. Even so, I believe the students got a lot out of the meeting.

I suspect that the students who participated in the meeting have had few chances to think of issues near at hand as their own problems and try to resolve them, even though they realized there were such problems.  ‘Fro-pro ADNa’ gave a good opportunity for them to think seriously about solutions, I believe. Their projects are scheduled to be completed by Jan. 22, when we will have a final presentation meeting. I am very excited to see how their activities will develop by then.

Related article

Adamant Namiki’s Initiative for SDGs – Launching ‘’fro-pro’’ Workshop

Fro-pro ADNa Instagram (Japanese only)　https://www.instagram.com/fropro_adna/

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