Leased / Private Leased Temporary Housing, and supporting of Work done at home.

Tohoku Help is currently operating two actual working facilities.
One of them is, "Tohoku Help secretariat". Its legal name is "General Incorporated Association Tohoku Diakonia". This corporation puts together information, and has the parental role in planning and executing new projects.

The other one is called "The Wakabayashi Help". This is a voluntary group, and its legal name is "Self-support Network". Director Kurosu of "Tohoku Help", is a representative of this group.

Metaphorically speaking, "Tohoku Help secretariat" is like an internal organ of a human body. It integrates the information, circulates the funds, and solves problems one by one. Which means, it has the role of human's "brain", "heart" and "liver".

And "The Wakabayashi Help", resembles the outward appearance of a human. Like the "skin", "limbs", or "face", it actually has contact directly at the sites, works at all sites, and acquires information from the sites. It becomes the front lines where the first class information is obtained.

"The Wakabayashi Help" planned and executed a new project, having applied one month last month. Its' report are as follows.

This project indicates acute and serious conditions, and concerns two sites.

The first one concerns temporary housing. Thousands of people who have lost their houses, jobs, and homes live here. Human's dignity is sustained by "Rest", "Work" and "Love". The people living in these temporary housing are having their dignity threatened.

"The Wakabayashi Help" has started a "Work done at home Project", by creating works, hoping to give the people living in temporary housing chances to work. This is not a stand-alone project, but connects to various support projects. When various support projects are operated, simple work is framed up as a part time work for those living in temporary housing, in order to make "working" possible for them.

This is a devisal for those living in temporary housing.

The majority of those who lost their houses in earthquake and tsunami's, do not live in temporary housing. Most of the people who lost their homes live in an apartment or in a condo. Formerly, Sendai City was known as a city with many "vacant house", and "vacant room". So the government used a system to have the disaster victim live in these apartments, by defraying their house rent. This is called a "Leased Temporary Housing" or "Public Leased Temporary Housing"

In Sendai City, 20% of the disaster victim entered in to a temporary housing. Which means 80% of the people started living in "Public Leased Temporary Housing". Since regulations on personal information is strict nowadays, only the government has the information on people living in these "Public Leased Temporary Housing". As a result, 80% of the people are unable to get any assistance from NGO.

"The Wakabayashi Help's" essential activity would be the approach to these people. We are hoping this report would show a part of our searching and working, on possible way for this approach, together with the devisal of creating "Work done at home".

We greatly appreciate the assistance of all, which has made it possible for us to report these issues.

(April 5th 2012 Written by Naoya Kawakami)