Regional Leaders Attend the TOMODACHI Alumni Regional Leader Training

On June 30, and July 1, 2018, 25 TOMODACHI alumni leaders (19 Regional Leaders and six TOMODACHI Generation Summit Core Committee members) gathered from across Japan for a two-day training session in Tokyo. This leadership training program for the Regional Leaders and TOMODACHI Generation Summit Core Committee Members focused specifically on reflection of the Regional Welcome Events, goal-setting and skills-building for their next Regional Theme Events and the TOMODACHI Generation Summit to be held in September. The training was held at EDGEof, a new innovative space in the heart of Shibuya that supports change makers to build trust and collaborate in new innovative ways.

Day One: Workshops focused on celebrating successful completion of their Welcome Events in May and reflecting on what they were proud of but also what they wish had gone better in a session titled “Proud & Sorry”. Next, they explored the WHY by revisiting images and pictures they drew during the Orientation in March and gained inspiration by listening to Shinobu Hayama, Common Earth Co., and Mio Yamamoto, World In Tohoku (WIT), Kaoru Utada,TOMODACHI Initiative Alumni Manager, speak about why they do the work that they do.
The next session focused on how to promote their event by redefiing the why and connecting it to results they want to see and formed an event statement. Later on, taking the event statement they created a short 30 second video to promote their event aligned with their statements.

Day Two: Splitting into their respective regional and core committee groups, workshops on this second day mainly focused on brainstorming towards their next event. Each team was asked to write down the 5Ws for their event on large sheets of paper and everyone was asked to provide feedback through post-it notes. In the afternoon, 2017 Regional Leaders from the Tohoku-Hokkaido Region, Momoka Sato and Hiroto Konno, joined the session to share their experiences on crowdfunding as more regional leaders were interested in taking up the challenge this year.

The training programs – including the Orientation in March, this Leadership Training in June, and the Regional Mentor Retreat in July – are facilitated by World In Tohoku (WIT).For this training session, Hapnik joined as a guest facilitator and led a three-hour training session on event promotion that included identifying community needs through tangible and measurable goals and creating a short promotional video.
The TOMODACHI Generation Summit is the annual large-scale alumni conference, gathering 500 alumni and supporters, to be held at Showa Women’s University on September 9th 2018. The Summit is created by a core group of alumni called the Core Committee consisting of seven college students and recent grads who are all alumni of different TOMODACHI programs. They joined the training in June to better prepare for the Summit and to create opportunities for the Regional Leaders to be a more integral part of this year’s Summit.