Discovering and Shaping Local Value

When I was a first-year high school student, I visited an organic farmer in Takahata, Yamagata Prefecture, for a class fieldwork project. There, for the first time, I felt the warmth and smelled the aroma of soil cultivated through organic farming methods, and I was struck by the wonder of organic vegetables. When I revisited a year later, I was surprised that the farmers remembered me and welcomed me back with smiles, saying, "Okaeri" (Welcome back). Warm-hearted people, delicious vegetables that are gentle on the body... I, who had always thought there was nothing in my hometown, realized that such irreplaceable things were right there all along.

In Takahata, a rare vegetable called "Genkina" is grown. It can be harvested in large quantities during the summer, but consumption can't keep up, and much of it is thrown away. Hearing the farmers repeatedly say, "What a waste," I strongly felt I wanted to do something to give back, but I didn't know how.

So, I consulted my high school teacher, who suggested, "How about trying to create a product using Genkina?" At that moment, I came to my own conclusion about the challenge of "giving back." It was to "commercialize Genkina and convey the warmth of Takahata and the deliciousness of its organic vegetables."

From there, I involved people from the Takahata town office, organic farmers, and a food processing company, and we worked together to move forward with commercialization.

In the winter of my second year of high school, my teacher recommended that I enter the "My Project Award." The "My Project Award" is a venue for high school students to present their ideas and thoughts that they have given shape to.

First, I participated in a preliminary round called the "Yamagata Prefecture Summit," where I presented my project on Takahata. Luckily, I advanced to the "National Summit." However, during the final selection at the National Summit, I couldn't answer the question, "How were you able to get people involved?" I had cultivated a passion and drive to "try anything," but this question made me realize that I hadn't been able to "objectively analyze" my results. In the end, I was able to win the "Best Co-Creation Award," but I was not satisfied that I didn't have a clear answer to the question.

"'The power to involve others' will definitely be necessary in the future. If I don't understand the reason behind it, I won't be able to apply it to other projects. What should I do..." As I worried about this, a new question arose: why was someone able to ask such a question in the first place? It was then that I learned that Professor Hiroshi Suzuki, the chairman of the My Project Executive Committee who had asked me the question, taught at SFC, and that Kumi Imamura, the Representative Director of the certified NPO Katariba which runs My Project, was an SFC graduate.

The simple thought, "I want to become an adult like them. To do that, I just need to get into SFC!" was what initially motivated me to aim for SFC. But the more I researched SFC, the more my admiration grew, and it turned into a conviction that what I wanted to do could only be done at SFC.

From the time I decided to enter SFC, I wanted to get involved in community building in places other than my own hometown, hoping to gain a broader perspective to identify local issues and potential. For that reason, I joined the Yoshinori Iimori Seminar in the fall semester of my first year.

The "Genki Project," which the Yoshinori Iimori Seminar develops nationwide, is a "project to energize communities" where students work with local people to identify problems facing the community, propose solutions, and implement them.

I am currently active as a member of the "Slow City Project" and as the leader of the "Sawara Genki Project" in Sawara, Katori City, Chiba Prefecture. My main research themes are "the value that a slow city provides to its residents" and "the effects of food education through organic farming."

The Sawara Genki Project also collaborates with companies, and I am thrilled to be working in an environment with a high degree of freedom, where I can explore new possibilities while being inspired by the speed and advanced methods of the corporate world.

Right now, I have a desire to learn concrete methods for communicating the appeal of a region. Even if you commercialize wonderful local resources, how you present and communicate them is crucial to making people feel their appeal. Therefore, in addition to my research, I am also involved in public relations work through internships and other opportunities, where I am learning practical skills such as photography, design, copywriting, and marketing. I want to feed this knowledge and these skills back into my research and put them into practice so that the charm of the region can be conveyed to more people.

My future goal is to create a system within the Sawara Genki Project that allows the community to become self-sustaining. Although the project has just started, I already feel the many charms of Sawara, such as its rich food culture, beautiful townscape, and traditional festivals. I want to build a platform that leverages Sawara's unique characteristics and becomes a spiritual anchor for the local people.

My desire to give back to my hometown, including Takahata, which is the origin of my activities, has not changed at all. In the future, I want to contribute to my hometown by turning the local value I have discovered into a business and promoting its appeal to a wider audience. And then, I want to be the one to pass on the many things I have learned from SFC and the local people to the next generation of children. To achieve this, I want to have a grand vision, expand my current learning horizontally, and continue to grow every day.