2022年度の活動報告

This year, as the spread of COVID-19 has gradually subsided since last fall, all but the third session were able to be held in a hybrid format of face-to-face and Zoom.
We did not conduct an on-site survey because it was not possible to predict the extent to which the spread of COVID-19 would be contained at the time of planning. Therefore, this year's activity report will focus on the five research courses that were held. The main contents of each course are as follows (see Table 1, Table 2, Table 3).
As the title (theme) suggests, Rie Kono, who took the first lecture, had a hard time even finding a job in Japan. She moved to Kenya due to her husband's circumstances, and even there she had zero business experience and almost no English skills. However, she was attracted to the apparel worn by African women, and started selling it online using Twitter at first. As demand increased, she gradually developed her business. She met her business partner while building a community in Africa (Kenya), and instead of immediately creating a sales website, she started with what she could do, such as using Twitter, and learned by doing. In a sense, she is a typical entrepreneur. She has been living in Kenya for most of the year, but this time she visited the school during her return to Japan and gave a lecture in a hybrid of face-to-face and Zoom.
The second speaker, Shinya Kanazawa, was the go-between when Naomichi Suzuki, the current Governor of Hokkaido, gave a lecture at Musashi University when he was Mayor of Yubari, and is still involved in Yubari's tourism business. As many people know, Yubari is a municipality that went bankrupt and is now in the process of revitalizing itself by becoming a compact city. Tourism was the core of the city's industry, but it was directly affected by COVID-19, and the only large tourist hotel in the city went bankrupt, leading to the current situation. It is unimaginably difficult to revive the city without being able to accept guests, but Kanazawa gave a lecture on what Yubari is currently working on. This research course was full of learnings and discoveries, including the city's attitude of not stopping and making the most of what it has now, such as its rich nature, the famous Yubari melon, and its film festival.
The third guest was Takahiro Ueyama, a councilor in the Regional Revitalization Promotion Office of Nishiawakura Village, Okayama Prefecture. Nishiawakura Village in Okayama Prefecture is a mecca for local ventures, with nearly 50 new businesses having been established there in the last five years. However, the scale of these businesses is small, and the connections between these new businesses and the relationships with the local people appear to be weak. Alps Giken and volunteers from Sagamihara City Hall, which have been conducting their own research on Nishiawakura Village, have constructed a hypothesis about the future direction of Nishiawakura Village, and based on this hypothesis, they conducted a research seminar in the form of interviews with key people in the Nishiawakura Village administration.
Regarding the "problems between existing villagers and I-turners" that the volunteer group had assumed from their literature survey, although there were still some issues in each case, Ueyama pointed out that in general, these have already been resolved, and that I-turners have built a relationship of trust that is essential for village management. He also mentioned that venture companies have moved from being primarily forest management businesses in the early days to being a service industry, which has made them closer to the local community, and that although the population is declining, it is being evaluated as a revitalization in terms of "diversification." This was a very fruitful research course, as it provided a wealth of up-to-date information that could not be obtained through literature surveys alone.
Our fourth guest, Yumie Konishi, is Alumni of the Social Enterprise Support Program implemented by the Cabinet Office in 2010 and the founder of a childcare company. In addition to nine childcare centers all named "Haguhagu Kids XXX", she runs 17 English conversation schools for children. She was already 50 years old when she founded the company, and started out as a social entrepreneur with no management experience whatsoever. The company has achieved annual sales 10 times the scale she had set as a goal at the time of founding, and now employs over 150 people. We spoke in detail about the great contributions she made to the people and lessons she learned through the local community, as well as the things she kept in mind when starting her business.
The fifth speaker, Masaaki Kuniyoshi, is an entrepreneur who is in continuous contact with our research group and is gathering information from him. This time, he gave a lecture on how he got through the COVID-19 pandemic that has lasted for about three years and his future direction. Kuniyoshi is constantly evolving his business. When he first started his business, his main focus was on experiencing Okinawan culture, but he later built accommodation facilities and changed his customer base from school trips to general customers (families). Now, he is trying to make the Lantern Festival, a new initiative, a pillar of his company's profits while spreading it to the entire village. He never forgets that he is a member of the village community and integrates the prosperity of the entire village with the development of his company, which is a true competitive edge that other companies cannot imitate.