JFS Newsletter No.183 (November 2017)
Coco Farm & Winery
Photo by so-oh Some Rights Reserved.
Vineyards cover a steep slope in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. The land was originally cleared by Noboru Kawata, then a junior high school teacher for special needs education, and his students. Cocoromi Gakuen, an institution for intellectually-challenged students, is located at the base of this slope. Supportive of Kawata's cause, families of Cocoromi Gakuen students established a private limited company in 1980 to produce wine together with these students. The company aims to help create a society in which everyone, including persons with disabilities, can live life to their fullest potential.
How far can job assistance for people with disabilities evolve in terms of business and industry, products and services, and ties with communities? This month's JFS Newsletter introduces the initiatives to work with intellectually challenged people and produce wine, based on an interview with Chieko Ikegami, who is executive director of the social welfare corporation Cocoromirukai and also executive director of Coco Farm & Winery, and Rieko Ushikubo, secretary-general of Cocoromirukai and chief operating officer of Coco Farm & Winery. This interview was conducted on March 30, 2017 for the SBN "Interviews with 100 Social Entrepreneurs" series. The content was rearranged and edited by JFS for this issue.*
The Green Power Work Shop, a business school organized by the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, took place in November 2017 in five cities in Japan. The school is designed to provide personnel training to support local businesses utilizing renewable energy, thus promoting sustainable development in local economies.
After the two-month application period and subsequent application reviews, the following cities were selected as the venues for the 2017 school: Aomori (Tohoku region), Hanno (Kanto region), Fukuyama (Chugoku region), Tokushima (Shikoku region), and Takeda (Kyushu region). The application process favored collaboration among local stakeholders such as residents, municipalities, and local financial institutions over individual businesses.
Four sessions will be held at each venue, with a capacity of 50 people per session, and no charge for participation. Lecturers include representatives from renewable power generation companies in leading sustainable communities, as well as financial specialists. Participants will gain a basic understanding of the renewable energy business in class, and experience business processes from planning to implementation through workshops.
The Green Power Work Shop was launched in 2013 and in four years, has been held at 23 venues and attended by over 700 people. More than 90 new region-specific business plans have been developed through the program. The hands-on learning in the school is expected to promote increased utilization of local renewable energy sources and contribute to the revitalization of local economies.
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