Second activity report /
August 22-24, 2018

Career Development Project for Young Adults with Foreign Roots (Kani, Gifu Prefecture)

For our second activity, the CITIZEN Group teamed up with the Kani International Exchange Association, a non-profit group that helps children in Kani who have connections to foreign countries and are past mandatory schooling age get into high school. Fifteen CITIZEN Group employees participated in this career development project for young adults with foreign roots.

Children with foreign roots

In recent years, non-Japanese workers are rapidly increasing in Japan, particularly since the country's Immigration Control Act was amended in 1990. These non-Japanese workers often bring their children with them to Japan, where they enter the local school system. The city of Kani in Gifu Prefecture has a population of just over 100,000, and about 6.8% of them (6,914 people as of August 1, 2018) are foreign nationals. Many of their children are forced to give up on the idea of going on to high school even though they are beyond mandatory schooling age due to the language barrier and differences between the educational systems in Japan and their home countries. With few career paths laid out for them, many have no choice but to take up low-paying jobs.

The CITIZEN First Watch Project

The CITIZEN First Watch Project watchmaking workshop is one way we can help these young adults overcome their challenges. The workshops are designed to teach young people about craftsmanship and the importance of time. They also include career discussions where teens can interact with company employees to help shape their thoughts and ideas on work. During the watchmaking portion, the young participants had fun drawing pictures on the watch faceplates, despite struggling a bit at times. With help from the instructors, they were able to screw the watches together and complete them. The children then put on the completed watches and posed for photos, which were immediately printed out on a photo printer made by a CITIZEN Group company and given to them as mementos. The room was buzzing with excitement.

The CITIZEN employees found ways to communicate the importance of time using simple language, since these were kids who are still in the process of learning to read and write Japanese. The employees put their heads together and took great pains to prepare just the right materials for their presentations.
The career discussions were a chance for the employees to paint a detailed picture of potential career opportunities for the kids by touching on the meaningfulness of work, communication with fellow employees at the workplace, how to get the most out of leisure time, and more.

In the end, the CITIZEN First Watch Project was a way to bring all of the participants together through interactions founded on mutual respect, with the idea of giving CITIZEN employees an intimate look of the reality of daily life in Japan for children with foreign roots.