The 3rd Asia-Pacific CBR Congress

Hello, everyone. My name is Yurika Watanabe. I am a representative of the association of Kusanone Mutual Support Project. We support people who are suffering from poverty and isolation. Today, I really appreciate this opportunity to report our activities to you. Shall we begin?

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In Japan, recently we are having economic issues caused by depression. Since it is too rapid for government to deal with it, the number of people who aren’t helped by the social security system is increasing. In addition, there are misunderstandings. The reason they are poor is they have some disability and complication in their family background or social occasion though people think they are lazy and don’t make efforts. Our society tends to exclude them because people think they are troublesome and useless, and then it result in them suffering from not only economy issues but also serious isolation.

Our Kusanone Mutual Support Project implements our activities to help “those who are marginalized from social security system” and “who are ignored by people despite of their efforts to live with some difficulties”. Therefore we do volunteer bank that can solve daily life-based difficulties not just by relying on the social security system but by visiting and staying close to the clients. Which is called “Nekonote Bank”. (It’s good name, isn’t it!) The volunteer members consist of those who have disability or whose family member has disability. Also some members experienced the depression or shut-in or school phobia. They know how difficult to live alone with no support.

From now, I’ll introduce the activities of Nekonote bank. Our support is to escort them to the hospital, go shopping with the clients, clean up their house, provide foods, help them apply for public assistance, and improve the clients’ family relationships, arrange telephone consulting, find new clients and self-help groups. There are lots of various activities. We do anything if it helps to solve the clients’ issues. However we are not just a handy man. What we would like to do is to make “more than friend and less than family relationship”.

Please look at this CBR matrix. As I explained, Nekonote bank offers plenty of supports to help their issues and meet their needs individually. However our basic support area of our Nekonote bank in CBR matrix are only three.

①Personal assistance

②Advocacy and communication

③Support for development of life and social skills

①Let’s see personal assistance first. Our Nekonote volunteers go to the clients’ living place as an outreach like visiting/escorting and stay close to them to meet their needs.

②Next we take a role as a ”interpreter’ “mediator” between other peoples and our society. Based on relationship of trust raised in ①, we increase the number of supporters around the clients by telling their issues and difficulties in communication clearly. This is the “Advocacy and communication”.

③Finally, we implement “skill development” to live. This is the support that helps the clients be able to do what we did as a interpreter in②. With development of the way of communication and livelihood that is suitable for individual, the clients can improve their skills.

Through the three approaches, the social resources around the clients spread widely. Please see this matrix. The functions we did directly for the clients are only ①~③. By doing so, we can connect the clients and community supporters, social resources and specialized agencies beyond the area where we can support. We cooperate together with supporters and support organizations that provide blue code matrix services, so we can provide the clients who are in social isolation with those services. Yellow code matrix is under development. When we try to support individual life, we will spread the network widely and deeply to support those who are in trouble and isolation, with working on our society.

Covering “Health” and “livelihood” matrix code, the clients become able to live their good and safe life. Covering “Education”, “Society” and ”Enpowerment” matrix codes, the clients become able to find happiness in the relationship with people through experience of helping someone or being helped by someone. With clients’ two experiences, they will be able to play a role in community without any support from us. This is the final goal of our project.

We build up the “more than friend and less than family relationship” with the client as “close other people”. Then the clients start to build up relationship with other people based on the experience of interaction with us. Eventually they take roles in community by themselves and make environment where supporters are always with them.

From now, I will introduce the examples of our clients who were able to be in the state of social inclusion out of social isolation.

No.4 “gabage room” →　“find merry” →　“being useful”: Ms. A

Ms. A is 40 years old, female. When she was homeless (stayed outside for several days), Nekonote bank started to support her. She was bullied hard but teacher couldn’t help her, then she started to suffer from school phobia. She didn’t go to high school and even kinder garden. She couldn’t continue to work long because of her character (developmental disability. At that time, she was not diagnosed yet and got no any treatment). She had her own house but it is filled with garbage, so we couldn’t enter her house. In addition, she is not good at dealing with any procedure, so she had no medical insurance card and no electricity and gas at her house. She couldn’t get any support in CBR matrix.

When we visited and heard her story, She said the most difficult thing is she cannot enter her house. Considering she was homeless, we are worried about her health. We told her that she needed to clean up house and also go to hospital, but she didn’t accept it. She said there should be the doll named “Merry” which she took good care of in her childhood and the letter that her loved grandpa gave her, so she didn’t want the cleaner or staffs in a health center to clean up her house. We respected her wish, so we gathered only women volunteer and started to clean up. It took 6 month to be able to enter and live in her house. We found the Merry and the letter finally.

While supporters cleaned up her house, heard her story and had homemade lunch together in the park, we started to build up relationship of trust with her. Naturally, she accepted our offers; using earplugs to prevent the hyperacusis caused from developmental disability, making rules for waste sorting and using mobile email.

With relationship of trust with supporters of Nekonote Bank having communication and doing recreation, we developed the way to have good communication by thinking again her past failure of communication. For examples, she asks for memo when taking orders. She asks for a low voice since she doesn’t like a big voice when talking with someone. She asks for people not to use metaphor or joking since it is hard to understand sometimes. She just takes a walk around park when being irritated,

With those skills, she gets to communicate with other people apart from us and go to hospital or judicial branch by herself. When she gets to improve her health, she is empowered and able to go to support organizations where people with disability gather in their community. The number of supporters who she can ask for help is increasing by having the self-help relationship. At that time we supported to fix the broken relationship between her and her family. She could go to the hospital where her mother was admitted for a mental condition. Her mother was unclear because of her disease so it was hard to have enough conversation but her mother said to us please be her friend as always.

Now Ms. A is able to take actions and find social resources or support organizations that she needs. She gets to accept her disability that she refused before through relationship in self-help group. Her aim is to find a way to earn money and establish the fund to support underprivileged children. She is studying how to make cookies and then she will sell them and start the fund. When we met her, her CBR matrix was just blank but now there are many check marks on her CBR matrix.

◇No.1 “Under public assistance in several areas” “overdose” ”employment” : Mr. B

Mr. B is 27 years old, male.

He suffered from domestic violence by his father. It was unbearable for her mother so she left 3-year-old Mr. B and run away. He has never met her ever since. He was thought he had mild intellectual disability. However he has insisted he is not stupid and never taken any services. It is because he got injured mentally when his father said to him that he should go to take a test for intellectual disability pretending idiot in order to get money from government.

He was neglected. It was usual for him to get no foods or things, so he just stole them. He joined a criminal group and took illegal drugs, and then he spent his time in a juvenile correctional institute. (He is still having a bad dream of the life in it.)

After he got out of the institute, he started to work but couldn’t continue. He had no one to rely on and no house to live in. He just got one baggage. He continued to move to different areas getting public assistance. When we met him, he was refused by public assistance office. There was only “primary education” check-marked on his CBR matrix. Except it, He had no support and no protection.

We provided him with a shelter and visited him with plenty of foods and clothes. He is talkative. We had meals with him, talked with him and supported his daily life. He started to trust us. As we explained advantages of support system, he decided to have his own house and get welfare services, which means that he was connected with medical and justice.

When he was in trouble, sometimes he broke things and used abusive language, took overdose of drugs, even suffered in coma. We always visited him every time so he told us “whenever he did something bad, people just left him. It was first time for him to be told “it is alright”. He decided to start over again.

Now he is surrounded by volunteers who help him study, supporters who visit him, friends who he can talk with about hobby and music or who he can go drinking with, doctor for treatment, and government officer. Then he has already started to work. He is employed under welfare support yet. His dream is to work generally, save money, get married and start Takoyaki shop in Philippines. Also he wants to earn money so that he can return courtesy.

Through those continuous supports, we realized that Nekonote Bank had four main functions. Firstly, we take role in mediator between the client and society (①Interpretative function). Secondly, we keep having network with various support organizations to develop relationship with society (②Network function). However our life cannot be enriched only with specialists and supporters. Therefore we make use of support from volunteers and community to help their daily life (③Unofficial function).

By making ①～③ work well, the client is acknowledged in community and there will be “ the feeling that I am needed and useful”. The changes in relationship between the client and society will be created. We can improve the clients’ situation where they are suffering from social isolation and economic issues without no one leaves behind. We need to provide small successful experience for the client and put always someone who can be with the client (④monitoring function).

Those who are suffering from social isolation think they want to be useful for someone and society as much as (or more than) we think. Even when asking people who are in serious problems “What is your dream?”, they answered that “ we want to help someone though we are helped now. I admire it.

However as I explained in the first, it is not easy for people who are in social isolation with some congenital difficulties to be recognized. Without any acknowledgement, they spend their hard time in this exclusion. Therefore there are many people in each different life stage who have continuous hard time and worries on relationship with other people.

In order to make society with no any isolation, we need to understand the reason that they are in poverty and isolation. Also we need to know and feel empathy on how they felt in their life. In addition we need to have interests in their life itself. Therefore, Kusanone Mutual Support Project holds the event called “living library”.

It is the workshop that we regard speaker who tell a story as “a book” and listener as “a reader” who borrow the book, so “the book” and “the reader” can interact. People who experienced shut-in, who have disability like the depression or developmental disability, total blind, who were homeless and who are sexual minority told their story. It is the event that facilitates our understanding. The speakers told their life story and listeners paid attention to it, which helped to understand their background. It was the first time to hold the event, but many people have interests and media introduced it.

In order to support inclusively isolated people with some difficulties and to help the clients take roles in community by themselves, one supporter or one support organization are not enough. We need multi-experienced people beyond their system, their specialty and Unofficial/Offical to provide their various “What-I-can-do” supports. We develop a workshop that is called “Potluck of what-I-can-do project ”

Participants share example of multiple clients’ issues that the system cannot cover. Then they write out and share what they can do against these issues. Not only they can recognize the difference among “with 1 supporter and with 10 supporters and 100 supporters” but also they can experience the possibility and effectiveness of multi-sector partnership. We received lots of offers to hold the event. It is also introduced by UN newsletter as “ a effective workshop for community development”.

All of us have own strength that is never defeated and also we have weakness that we want to hide. Most of us think we want to live, showing only good strength and hiding our weakness.

However people who are marginalized from community and deprived of their basic life cannot help living in their harsh life, showing their weakness. I think it is truly agony for them.

People with some difficulties we support choose to live, showing their weakness and never give up their life with their strong mind.

I am always impressed with it. We are aiming for the society where we could get supports for our weakness and could make use of strength so that everyone can live happily and peacefully. The concept of Kusanone Mutual Support Project is “For the society where we can live as we are and we can share our feeling”

What I feel through continuous projects is that people with difficulties we support can lead our way beyond our concept. We believe we will be able make better society where we can understand our strength and weakness by trial and error with them. We want to continue our activities.

We are on the way toward our ideal concept but we were able to introduce trial and error in our activities.