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Japan Tsunami Samaritans
(an unincorporated social society) Photo taken by Fugiwara, a member of the JTS helping to organise the Society This is a personal message from Jack Adams and Akane Takayama concerning the actions we are taking in response to the Japanese Tsunami disaster of 11th March 2011. We both know how much people were moved by events but the world is a busy place and the media has now moved on to other "stories". Well we would ask you to consider joining the Japanese Tsunami Samaritan Society we have now set up with people in Japan and England. Don't worry, we are not trying to hoover out your wallets or max out the credit cards, that is not the approach we believe is either helpful or actually needed. What we are looking for is your love and compassion for the children who have lost families in this catastrophe. We are asking you to join the society and help to give them support from their human family. We are asking you to be surrogate uncles and aunties, grandmothers and grandfathers in very simple but meaningful ways. The reason we feel this necessary may not be well understood in the West. You see the whole of Japanese society is built on the family, the hierarchy of order is founded on the role of the family in a way we simply have forgotten here in the west. That stability of family and the identity of being Japanese provide the nation with more than enough resolve to pull through this disaster. You all saw the Japanese people queuing quietly and patiently for supplies, for petrol and even for the telephone after their world had been shattered. That is what their Japanese identity and their social family sense provides them with, the value of being orderly. But the tsunami has swept away not just buildings but almost whole families and as the landscape is scarred so are the lives of many children. The reason why this has been such a family calamity is that the earthquake shelters in Japan have been built in schools. The reason for this is that schools have a ready infrastructure for operation in times of emergency, they are where everyone can get to them and, most importantly, in times of disaster the children are already at the shelter. The problem with the tsunami of 2011 is that whilst many children were safe some if not all of their family never made it to security. These children may have lost not just brothers and sisters but fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers. Uncles and Aunties, cousins, the whole fabric of their emotional family was swept away in that dreadful wave. We know of one story where a young boy of about 8 was in a car with his parents, his grandmother and his cousin when the wave struck them. The branch of the tree hit the window and the boy managed to knock a hole through the shattered glass. He pulled his cousin out and remembers his grandmother calling for help but was then torn away in the current even losing grip of his cousin. He came to on a rooftop from where he was rescued. For days afterwards he trudged around the rescue centres with a poster asking if anyone had seen his family but they were all drowned. This is just one story and there are many but our question was how could we possibly help. Japan doesn't need aid, it doesn't need support in the way Haiti needed our support but we feel that those children and the schools in that devastated area could do with some very grounded practical support. Akane Takayama has been able to bring together her friends in the Japanese community in London and those friends in Japan to start to provide a sensible infrastructure for our support. In short, over the past 8 weeks we have made contacts and formed communication links with those who directly need that support. See for yourself how our network on the ground is building. What is more, through this network we can actually deliver the support an ensure it gets straight to those who need it, no middlemen, no skimming and absolutely no waste due to the type of dreadful inefficiencies which plague charitable support around the globe. We want to provide simple ideas, like sending these children birthday and New Years cards, doing all the little things, so easily done, that their family would normally have done. We have formed as a Society and invite those who wish to help to join. If you become a member you will then have a say in how the society is run and how it provides its support. We are looking for an annual membership fee of £10 (or equivalent in your own currency) and this money will be used exclusively to administer the running costs of the society. Each member will receive a quarterly newsletter keeping them informed of what is going on and what is happening on the ground. Our membership in the area will be feeding back video, images and stories so you will be able to see for yourselves what is going on. Û¡û©çW~W_ We are working in both Japanese and English and the above image and link is an article posted by another member of the team working around the affected area. We have the ambition for those who have the concern to be able to stand behind these children and be there for them in small ways right up until their university education. We want you to join the society so that in a very simple and easy way you can give these children something of a sense of family when all seems lost. We will also set about raising funds to mount different projects and those monies will be ring-fenced so that every pound donated is spent directly on those it is intended for. There are a few problems with this ambition because banks and other organisations make charges we sometimes simply cannot get past. We will try to avoid such costs but if we have to pay bank fees they will be declared and published if for no other reason than to shame those who profit from others suffering and the generosity of the concerned. We have built a web presence, secured banking facilities as an unincorporated society and now need to build an initial membership and so we ask you to join the society now. Just pay through paypal £ 10.00 for UK membership. Which is about: $16.70 for USA. AU$ 15.20 for Australia. Euro 11.20 for European. Yen 1355 for Japan. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com www.japan-tsunami-samaritans.org www.humanrightstv.com www.takethepebble.com |
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