ARTICLE
Interview with Sun And Dear
－We want more people to join the international cooperation－
Q. When did you begin to work officially?
A. In 2015, I established this organization with two other people and named it “Sun And Dear”. But I was busy in my work that year and we could not do anything noticeable. In 2016, we could start our activities in earnest.
Q. Have you been doing anything to support “Home of Hope”, which can be said to have made you establish Sun And Dear?
A. We have been there regularly. We mainly help them with mental health care of the children such as playing with the children and support for event planning. One of their problems is the lack of money for running the facility, so we send donations as well.
＊Home of Hope
Mr. Wano stayed here for doing volunteer activities when he was a university student. “St. Martin Foundation”, which is located in the Nonthaburi Province, established this facility for children in 1998. Now, 70 children being from infant to junior high school student are living here and most of them are from slums around the facility. They have supported more than about 800 children so far.
(more detailed information about Home of Hope is HERE）
Q. Why did you start holding “Meetup Cafe”?
A. We started this event for students eager to take a step to international cooperation. Also, I hope it will partly help solve the poverty issues. We are trying to get understanding on our activities by setting different themes about the poverty issues to discuss every time. I can feel that it raises consciousness of the participants to exchange ideas about what they can do for international cooperation.
＊Meetup Cafe
It is one of the events Sun and Dear organizes. Workers as well as students join this “ café” and can get to know the present situation of international problems and discuss international cooperation freely.
Q. How do you start a new project?
A. We talk with each other about what to do and launch a new project. Recently, we are planning to start a new business, feeling that an economic activity is needed in order to continue running our organization. But such a project is not always showy, like finding a sales partner of goods step by step. We think we can change the way how to achieve a project if the first attempt does not work well. Now, in Japan, we are thinking to sell coffee beans made by hill tribes in Lampang and handicrafts made by women in countryside of Nong Khai.
Q. How do you collect money for your activities?
A. We have donors who give a fixed donation every month. Also, some transfer donation to our account directly, and others contribute to us after our events like Meetup Cafe.
Q. Do you contribute all donations you collect to “Home of Hope”?
A. We use the donations for “Home of Hope” and other activities as well. As to sales of goods, we use it for the local organization and our activities.
Q. What difficulties did you have when you formed the organization?
A. I had difficulties in “how to ask members to do a work” and “how to share the feelings for our activities”. When I ask members, who are busy with their regular work, I contact them with SNS in our group and ask to check when it’s convenient for them. As for how to share the feelings, it took time to build a relationship of mutual trust and to make a sense of unity in the organization. That is because 1. Some members haven’t been to “Home of Hope” and don’t know the present situation with feelings of reality. 2. Some were not satisfied with variety of our activities’ contents. 3. Some were unsuitable for the atmosphere of the organization, which often happens when it’s not long after an organization was established.
Q. We heard that all members have their regular job except for Sun and Dear. What is the difficulty of it?
A. It is so hard that we cannot have time to hold a meeting. We have meetings once in a week now, but it is still difficult to set time when everyone is available. So we introduced JANDI, the SNS that we can use within group members, and hold a meeting online and try to deal with everyone’s schedule flexibly.
Q. Sun And Dear is an NGO now but why you aim to be an NPO?
A. There are many benefits if we could be an NPO. The first one is of course we can get more social reliability. The fact that we were accepted legally can be a proof that we are a group which came up to the level. The second reason is we can use many services for NPO coming to be enhanced recently. There are many services offering special service for NPO or offer their services with special price for NPO, such as Google for Adgrants, Peraichi (service to create web pages).
Q. What do you think about what Business/ NPO can do and cannot do?
A. I think business cannot avoid “distributing the profits” although they may be able to affect a lot to the society because their scale is big. On the other hand, the essence of NPO is “contribution to the society.” I think NPO is a better choice in order to desperately stick to the vision that “making the society in which all children in the South East Asia can be happy regardless of where they were born and their environment.“ But the issue is capable people don’t work for NPOs because the salary is lower than business.
We will deliver our interview article from Japan.
We interviewed Sun And Dear, a non-governmental organization, which aims at creating the society where all children in Southeast Asia can be happy regardless of where they were born or the environment they live. Mr. Keisuke Wano, the representative of Sun And Dear, has wanted to solve the poverty since he did volunteer activity as a live-in staff at a facility for children in Thailand during his university days. In 2015, he established Sun and dear in order to realize his hope.
Today, we had an interview with Mr. Wano.
Mr. Wano
He starts Sun And Dear's work after his regular job finishes.
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Goods for selling (coffee and handicrafts)
-Bruno coffee :Sun And Dear tie-up with an organization working to support people in mountainous area. A part of the sales will be used as scholarship of children.
-Handicrafts :Tie-up with an organization supporting single mothers. A part of the sales will be used for their living.
Mr. Wano and a member of Think (Sasaki)
Q. What did you learn from your activities?
A. Because we need to know many things when we work on a wide variety of activities, we have to keep on learning such as the law of NPO, IT and trade. For example, because trade is an economic activity no matter how small it is, it will be an obstacle if we didn’t have knowledge about trade like tariff.
Q. When do you feel it’s really worth working on your activities?
A. One is when we can bring our donation as “the donation from Sun and Dear”. The other one is when our members said “I want to try this!” and “I like working for Sun and Dear”.
Q. What do you keep in your mind when working as Sun and Dear?
A. I always keep “Not telling a lie” and “Working flexibly” in my mind. We try to tell what we heard as it is, the information of Home of Hope and the information when I get the themes of Meetup Café, for example. And, it is actually wrong that “NGO must not earn money”. It won’t be a problem if the NGO uses their profits for their own activities. In order to achieve sustainable activities, we are trying not to stick to preconceptions and work on new kinds of projects.
Q. How do you recruit new members?
A. We use “ACTiVo”, an online database for people who want to join the international cooperation. What they do depends on when they join us. But for people who have will that they want to achieve, we give them tasks concerning it. For people who haven’t concretely decided what they want to do yet but want to support us, we set goals for them.
Q. Do you accept volunteer currently?
A. Yes, we are looking for volunteers especially students. They will experience all the work such as planning a new project, sales promotion and measuring the effect. Even though it is unpaid volunteer work, we’re looking for people who can work actively with enthusiasm. We can decide the term and time after talk.
Q. Do you have any goals you want to achieve in the future?
A. We want to expand our support in Cambodia, Myanmar and Bangladesh by 2030. I knew by the investigation of IMF that these three countries are the economically poorest countries in southeast Asian countries and it made me think so. In addition, now we deliver our support by sending the donation to Home of Hope, but we want to give financial support to the area around Home of Hope as well as the other areas in the end. It is because we think all of children’s problems are caused by adults and creating employment is the most appropriate approach for them. What we are going to start is selling projects for establishing “a new business which fuses international cooperation and business”, which is one of social business.
Q. What does your future look like?
A. I want to contribute to the development of the NPO sector and at the same time, would like to achieve Sun and Dear’s vision. Because we think “diversity can produce evolution,” I want to make the sector more attractive and invite more people to it.
< After Interview>
We were absorbed in talking and the scheduled time had passed a lot when we finished the interview on the day. I sympathized with his feeling that Japan looked differently when he came back from Thailand. I think there are “uncommon” situations outside our own countries and our living environment. “Think” continues to interview and sending information with the wish that we want more people to notice the facts.
Anyway, I was impressed by Mr. Wano’s words, “I want to make it easier to join international cooperation for all people.” Sun and Dear is leading “the international cooperation that people can join with having job” with introducing new technology and ideas. Concerning workstyle and financial reasons, I guess there are many people feeling anxiety to make living by working for international cooperation. By expanding the activities like those of Sun and Dear and more people feel the international cooperation closer, it will lead to improving each person’s mind and can be one type of supports. We have branches in both Thailand and Japan, so there are still points we need to improve such as managing members’ tasks. We would like to introduce new tools and improve our management system following Sun and Dear. Also, their attitude to challenging many new projects stimulated us to review our own management and activities. Thank you so much.
<Aren’t you interested in volunteering with Sun and Dear?>
Students: who can work actively and with enthusiasm.
You can experience PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Action) such as creating a new project, sales promotion and measuring the effect.
<Original brand "swai">
The selling project mentioned in the interview was established as a original brand "swai".
The sales will be used for Sun and Dear's activities and donation for the area. Visit the site if you are interested in!
Sun And Dear official shop site : http://shop.sunanddear.org/
23rd April, 2017
Sasaki
Itaya, Sasayama, Suzuki, Miyagawa