Osaka Marathon 2017

OISCA
The Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement-International (Public Interest Incorporated Foundation)

Coastal Forest Restoration Project to help revitalize the area devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake

Black pine trees uprooted and dikes wiped out by tsunami
From sowing up to planting preparations are done by local farmers.
Volunteers from all over Japan come to help every month.

Organization Profile: OISCA is international non-governmental organization founded in 1961. Equipped with over five decades of working experience at grassroots level, we launched the Coastal Forest Restoration Project shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake. We are engaged in helping restore the coastal forest, as well as prompting employment for earthquake-affected farmers in collaboration with donors and volunteers from all over Japan as well as the local government and residents.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Donations will be used in restoring the 100 hectare coastal forest in Natori city, Miyagi prefecture lost by tsunami by raising seedling and planting 500,000 black pine trees; providing support for living expenses and jobs for over 11,000 earthquake-affected farmers; and silvicultural activities which will be continued until 2033.

NPO HELLOlife

Achieving a town where youth can work vigorously through litter pickup activities

All-night litter pickup event (Osaka)
Litter pickup event on a desert island (Tomogashima Island, Wakayama)
Young adults working on a job-hunting program at HELLO life

Organization Profile: As well as urban litter pickup activities, we have also been organizing event-based activities such as litter pick up events on a desert island and all-night litter pick events since 2007. Currently, we help those young people who visit our assistance facility, “HELLO life” (Hommachi, Osaka), with concerns over work and their lives by providing a venue and opportunities to make friends, a space to let them be themselves and a place to nurture fundamental social skills. More than 10,000 people have participated in our activities to date.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: The ideal “beautiful town” that we target does not simply appeal visually, but is also a town where every young person can work vibrantly. As well as continuing and expanding our funding for litter pickup activities, we would like to work and develop a system to support young people in their efforts to create a beautiful town. We appreciate your support and cooperation to successfully create a town in which young people can live and work comfortably.

NPO Pool Volunteer

Teaching all children with disabilities how to swim at municipal swimming pools

Enjoying a swimming pool with volunteers.
Enter the water using the slope of the swimming pool!
They are on wheelchairs in their daily lives but mermaids in the pool!

Organization Profile: Swimming is the most suitable sport for the health and rehabilitation of intellectual disabled children and those in wheelchairs. We are engaged in volunteer activities to support such children's enjoyable swimming experience in safety.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: We intend to use the money to fund wheelchairs for a swimming pool that enable disabled children who cannot walk to move safely, grant the wish to be able to swim for as many as possible, prepare safety mats at the poolside and conduct training activities to familiarize participants with the knowledge and skills to take care of disabled people nationwide.

NPO Kaikaku Project

Anti-crime patrols through running to help keep city streets safe

Patrol Run to monitor children coming home from school
Patrol Run to ensure the safety of women walking along the road at night
A group photo of Patrol Run members at a marathon

Organization Profile: We strive to achieve a local community where children, women and senior citizens can live with peace of mind. We invented new-style crime-prevention procedures called “Patrol Run”, which feature our members on patrol and running through the town. We play an active role, centering on such runners, in twenty-one prefectures nationwide.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Osaka is a crime-filled city with the highest level of street crime nationally for 16 consecutive years. We would like to use the donations to offer Patrol Run activities in Osaka as well as ingraining Patrol Run nationwide to achieve a crime-free world.

Association for Nature Restoration and Conservation, Japan (Specified NPO)

Domestic natural environment conservation activities centering on Osaka

The OSAKA RANGERS PROJECT will be launched!
Providing a hands-on learning program on the beach for local children in Kesennuma City
© Photo by Shingo Sano and Graphic by AO
An activity to regenerate a habitat for fireflies in the terraced paddy fields found in the Ishibe region of Matsuzaki town in Shizuoka prefecture and the commercialization of ecotours.

Organization Profile: Under the mission of “Regeneration of the beautiful Japanese natural environment and local communities”, we focus on the following activities: “① Fostering environmental leaders”, “② Conserving and regenerating the natural environment” and “③ Invigorating rural districts” together with 6,900 individuals, 41 colleges and other institutions nationwide.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: We are engaged in activities to conserve the natural environment of Osaka, which is being destroyed and lost due to development alongside urbanization, as well as conserving the natural environment of rural areas; vanishing as people neglect to preserve it. Moreover, we also provide opportunities for children to have formative experiences in the immediate natural environment.

Japan Environmental Education Forum (JEEF)
(Non-Profit Organization Incorporated Foundation)

Creating a society where all children can interact with nature from the heart

© JEEF
Learning about the abundance of the sea with high-school students
© JEEF
Savoring the comfort of the forest with city children
© JEEF
Forging the future of Asian children

Organization Profile: Children end up further and further removed from nature each year. It is significant to have experiences to perceive nature that is close and irreplaceable to us to achieve a better society where people can coexist with nature. We conduct “environmental education that bridges children in future” based on nature experience.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donations will be used to create a system connecting nature and children who rarely have opportunities to interact with nature due to regional and family circumstances. Our activities include challenging mountain climbing for single-parent children and fostering youngsters who support the natural environment of local communities.

Tsurumi Children’s Hospice (General Incorporated Association)

A second home nurturing children with intractable diseases and their families

A second home for children with intractable diseases and their family opened in spring 2016.
Brothers and sisters of the target children also have a relaxed time.
Having dinner with family at TCH when coming to see a family for a brief visit.

Organization Profile: The Tsurumi Children’s Hospice (TCH), Japan’s first community-based hospice for children, opened in spring 2016 in Tsurumi ward, Osaka. Whatever illness its children may have, they value enjoying the same experience as their peers of the same generation and every moment spent there. The TCH is a second home for children with life-threatening diseases and their families, who support them to enhance their quality of life.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donations will be used for the children’s hospice activities involving local communities, such as providing a venue for children with serious illness and their family and friends to spend the night together and forget about even being in poor health, opportunities to visit their home or hospital, as well as creating an environment where they can play outdoors with children in the street at ease.

D x P (Specified NPO)

Supporting high-school students facing problems such as absenteeism and economic difficulties

@Yusuke Nishikawa
We offer a class called “Crescendo”, where students can engage adults in dialog.
@Yusuke Nishikawa
The adults get involved in the high-school students efforts to adopt an approach of never denying what they say or do.
@Yudai Araki
Why not seek “a society where youngsters can have hope for their futures”?

Organization Profile: To provide high-school students with opportunities to interact with people rather than being isolated, D x P is an NPO offering high-school students taking correspondence courses or attending high-school evening classes the opportunities to engage in interactions and experiences. More than 40 percent of evening high schools have introduced our unique program, “Crescendo” in Osaka.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donations will be used carefully to provide our unique program and after-school program, “Crescendo” and “After Crescendo” respectively, at public evening high schools which have many students facing family and economic problems.

Hope & Wish for Children with Life-Threatening Illness and Their Families (Non-Profit Organization Incorporated Foundation)

Support for children with incurable diseases and their families

The key is …all family members!
Abundant smiles.
We encounter many people.

Organization Profile: This organization aims to support children with intractable or incurable diseases, who are thought to number more than 200,000 nationwide and their families by providing opportunities all the families of children fighting difficult diseases to connect with others in society, by inviting all members to theme parks, hair salons etc.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donations will be used for activities to support children with intractable or incurable diseases, such as family vacation, exchange opportunities with local people, charity events and constructing facilities for respite care, as well as briefing sessions and campaigns to realize them.

Befrienders Worldwide Osaka Suicide Prevention Center (Specified NPO)

Providing helpline assistance and support for families bereaved by suicide and comfort in the face of hardship

［Telephone counseling scene］
We think of people having concerns and listen to them.
［Helpline PR poster］
Pour your heart out – share things with us that you cannot tell anyone else.
［Helpline counselors now sought.］
We cannot take all 10,000 calls a month.

Organization Profile: We consider the feelings of people in a precarious situation, who want to kill themselves and have offered them assistance via our helpline service for 39 years since 1978. We also organize meetings for bereaved families who lost their beloved ones through suicide where they can share their grief.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donations will be used for PR and suicide prevention enlightenment activities to inform as many people about our helpline service and get as many needy people connected to the helpline as possible. Although we receive more than 10,000 telephone calls a month, we cannot answer every call. Accordingly, we also strive to foster helpline counselors to take as many phone calls as possible and recruit counselors via PR activities.

NPO Nobel

Providing daycare support for sick children to help single parents in Osaka

Whenever children become feverish, it is sudden, but we are always there to help you. What we give you is “security”.
In single-parent families, 38% of children are left alone, even when sick. That is why Nobel staff will accompany them.
To bequeath what we were entrusted with via our care takers to the next generation. This is a mechanism of social support for child-rearing families, to facilitate the cycle of mutual aid.

Organization Profile: Aspiring to realize “a society allowing parents to continue working after childbirth without much surprise”, Nobel was established in 2009 as the first mutual aid project offering a “home-visit day care service for sick children” in the Kansai region. The service unfailingly dispatches nursing care staff to children’s homes whenever needed, even for same-day requests. In 2013, Nobel also started up “a single-mom support project”, providing economical day care services for sick children for single parents earning under three million yen a year and currently supports more than 100 children.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: We strive to offer “reassurance of being able to work, even if a child suddenly falls ill”, “support for employment and economic independence of single parents” and “prevention of the poverty cycle which bequeaths poverty to the next generation” by providing a sick-child day care service for about 1,000 yen per month for single-parent families. Your donations will be used to support such parents’ ordinary livelihoods, where they no longer need worry about leaving their children alone and going to work, even when suffering from a high fever and vomiting.

NPO Sodateage Net

Job assistance for young unemployed people

Organization Profile: Amid the young population for the next generation has been decreasing, one in sixteen young people is out of job. Regarding support for unemployed youth as “social investment”, Sodateage Net provides youth with a basic job preparation program, “Job Training” and gives assistance to their parents, as well as study and employment supports to the children of needy families.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donation enables us to sustain our “Youth Employment Support Package”, which allows the young people who cannot afford financially to participate in our “Job Training” (a basic job preparation program for those who have difficulties in finding jobs and preparing themselves for working) without paying their expenses, as well as “Manabitasu” (Study and Independence Support) for elementary, middle school, and high school students from families suffering economic hardships.

Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University

Research into regenerative medicine and drug development via iPS cells

© Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA),Kyoto University
Professor Shinya Yamanaka who works at CiRA as director
© Shinya Yamanaka, Professor, Kyoto University
iPS cells anticipated for the application of regenerative medicine and drug development
© Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University
The donated funds are used to hire institute members, 90 percent of whom are on non-regular employment contracts.

Organization Profile: This is a research institute where Professor Shinya Yamanaka, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2012, works as director. Many researchers and research support staff are dedicated to their research and work to improve the way patients suffering from injuries and diseases are treated.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: Your donation will be used carefully as steady employment of brilliant researchers and research support staff at the CiRA, establishment and protection of intellectual properties on iPS cells, support for research projects for medical applications, dispatch of information on iPS cell research and promotion activities, and furtherance of our stable research activities, etc.

Cancer Support Community Japan (Specified NPO)

Support for people with cancer and their loved ones

Organization Profile: As the Japan affiliate of the Cancer Support Community – the largest international non-profit organization dedicated to providing support to people affected by cancer – we have been engaged in activities in the Kanto region since 2001 and the Kansai region since 2013, providing psychosocial support for people with cancer and their loved ones from professions such as clinical psychotherapists, social workers and nurses in their local communities.

How donations funded by the Osaka Marathon are used: We intend to use the money raised through the Osaka Marathon to fund efforts to provide professional led psychosocial support for people with cancer, as well as broadly educating people about cancer prevention in the Kansai region, aiming to prevent cancer and create a society where people can retain their quality of life, even if developing the condition.

Charitable Organization