I first met Mr. Toshio Tajima at a party hosted by my ex-workplace years ago. At the first sight when I didn't even know who he was, I felt his broad smile was shining like the Sun. The impression then proved correct as I learned that he was the person who had been trying to bring affordable solar panels to Indian slums and villages all from his pocket money, not to give them away but to let them learn to build by themselves. As you know, this is something much harder than "just giving."
He was a high-school teacher in Saitama prefecture throughout his career. After his retirement, he had an opportunity to visit slums in Pune, where he met children with sparkling eyes working hard on their study and homework with full of joy and excitement, in spite of their apparently miserable living conditions. Inspired by them, he so started inviting a few of them every year by turns to his home in Japan or visiting them regularly in India to teach Japanese, as if they are his children.
In recent years, Mr. Tajima visits Pune two or three times in a year. During his little more than a month-long stay in India, he travels to different villages in Maharashtra or surrounding areas where people endure the harsh living due to unavailability of electricity and safe drinking water.
He helps villagers learn to assemble solar power generation systems so that they do not need to depend on the government's supply of electricity (and thus, pumping water by electric motor) and can live an independent life; he collaborates with a handful of NGO and NPO organizations from across the globe.
On the other hand, he still continues inviting Indian students and NGO officials to Japan. He sends them to educational institutions in the country for providing them opportunities to study the technology and agriculture techniques that they could utilize back in India.
Now, as his activities grow, he has registered an NPO organization named "NPO SOLAR, WATER, GREEN PROJECT" in Japan in the last July, and also got a young and talented worker, Ms. Hitomi Enomoto to support him. Now he is all set to elevate his organization to "an approved specified NPO corporation (Nintei NPO Houjin)" to access to the better opportunities for activities, including easier funding as people who donate to this type of NPO can get tax exemption. For this purpose, he needs to collect one hundred (100) supporting members, each of them gives minimum 3,000 yen (around 1600 INR / 25 USD as of the end ofFebruary 2016) per year.
He has already received 80 supporting members in the short period of less than one year since he has started calling. Therefore, taking this opportunity and getting permission from Mr. Tajima, I would like to publish the summary of his English leaflet below to let as many people as possible know his activities.
ASKSiddhi will continue posting the updates of his activities in line with his monthly newsletters.
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NPO SOLAR, WATER, GREEN PROJECT
Our project aims to support Indian villages. Our organization had started in 2006 when our primary focus was on to promote the education of children in slum areas of central and western part of India, in the state of Maharashtra. We were working with a local NGO called “Khelghar,” so we named our project as “Khelghar Japan” initially.
In some slum areas, there are even no basic infrastructure and utilities like electricity and toilets, even if they are in the heart of big cities. We identified one of the causes of the problem was due to the poor living standard in villages. After studying the situations, we realized that there are no other solutions for this problem but to improve the living standard of the people in slum areas as well as in the villages.
To tackle the problem fundamentally, we started working with "Jnana Prabodhini (JP*)" since January 2014.
Now we took another step in establishing our NPO which includes a broad range of fields and on a global scale. We believe that everybody in any society in the world has right to have safe and trusted food, and this is our main goals of activities.
*JP is an NPO and a local educational institution in Maharashtra having more than 50 years of presence. JP aims to train young people who are capable of supporting the society. It has a headquarters school in Pune and other branch schools in the different parts of India. The school has more than 700 staffs; the students and communities highly respect all of them. In 2011, we sent a laminator for manually building a solar panel to this school. It was the beginning of our collaboration. Now, they can make almost everything about a solar panel by themselves and mostly with the locally procurable materials. In the months of June and July 2014, we invited the vice principal of this school Mr. Subhash Deshpande to Japan, to study the fields related to our project.
Name:
[SOLAR] Solar panel and LED
[WATER] Drinking water and agricultural water
[GREEN] Organic and natural farming, ecology, and recycling
Our activities are not only limited to India but many other places in the world, including Africa. In Japan also, we are trying to connect villages and cities through the organic and natural farming.
Our three policies:
1. See the things from the underprivileged people's point of view.
2. Don’t give them money, give them a job.
3. Consider each activity in a global ecology scale.
Bases of activities.
Central office: Ageo, Saitama
Branch office: Yoyogi, Tokyo
Other bases in Japan: Saitama, Tokyo, Nagano and Kyoto
Overseas:
Midwest India (Pune and the neighboring villages)
Ghana (already installed three LEDs)
Germany and Austria
Source of funds:
Our initial sources of funds were Mr. Tajima's personal savings from his pension and the sales of Indian goods sold in different events and exhibitions in Japan, and donations from individuals. Now, it is getting critical for us to find new ways of raising funds to run an NPO. Therefore, we are currently in the process of registering our NPO to "an approved specified NPO corporation (Nintei NPO Houjin)" in Japan. To achieve this, we need one hundred (100) supporting members, with each of them gives minimum 3,000 yen (around 1600 INR / 25 USD as of the end of February 2016) per year. Once we become Nintei NPO Houjin, these supporting members will get tax exemption, and thus, we expect that it will be easier for us to raise funds.
For more details and knowing how to become our supporting member, contact us at:
NPO SOLAR WATER GREEN PROJECT
184-10, Itcho-me, Ageo, Saitama, 362-0046, Japan
E-mail: npo.swgp[at]gmail.com / Tel: +81-48-781-2887
Blog (in Japanese): http://blog.goo.ne.jp/khelgharjp-tj
Joint representatives: Toshio, TAJIMA and Hitomi, ENOMOTO
Mr. Tajima (left) and Ms. Enomoto
