After the unfathomable huge catastrophes struck the northeast of Japan on March 11, 2011, over the past months more than 254,000 Euro have flowed into the JDZB Donation Fund. We extend our heart-felt thanks to everyone for their most generous support.

With the funds donated five projects will be supported in Japan as outlined below:

Workshop of the National Institute for Youth Education (NIYE)
NIYE is a JDZB partner organization in the field of youth exchange. In February the institute hosted a workshop on the subject of catastrophe protection with youth from schools affected by the catastrophic earthquakes in 1995 (Kôbe earthquake) and 2011 (11th March Tôhoku), and who are engaged in preventative activities. The goal is to raise consciousness in catastrophe protection and promote students to undertake volunteer and community work. This workshop was supported  with 40,000 Euro.

Agricultural College of the Miyagi Prefecture
The Agricultural College was completely destroyed and is currently located in temporary facilities. However, it completely lacks almost all necessary teaching equipment ranging from textbooks to tractors. The College has created a list of required items. 75,000 Euro will be provided to purchase computers/notebooks and an electrical piano.

Three High Schools in Sôma, Fukushima Prefecture
The First and Second City High Schools Nakamura as well as Kôyô High School in Sôma were badly damaged and lost most of their buildings and teaching equipment in the Tsunami. The wind instrument orchestra was especially affected with most of its instruments lost or destroyed. The schools will be provided with 59,000 Euro to replace the lost or unusable musical instruments.

Library in Shichigahama, Miyagi Prefecture
The city library in Shichigahama was completely destroyed. The citizens of the town will also be in-volved in reconstruction efforts as well as collecting book donations. The town estimates that the library’s reconstruction and book purchases will cost approximately 5 million Euro, and these costs will only partly be covered by public funds. The library will be supported with 50,000 Euros.

Japanese-German Association Fukushima
Within the framework of an exchange program, the Japanese-German Association in Fukushima (one of the evacuation zones located directly in the vicinity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant) will enable youth from Litatemura to visit Germany for their vacations. They continue to live in an area where they’re not allowed to play outside, where they’re afraid of eating food that may have been exposed to radiation. Through their stay in Germany and in interacting with German youth we hope to give them more courage to better master the difficult situation they and their families are now living in. This project will be supported with 30,000 Euro.  

We will continue to provide updates about the progress of these individual projects on this site.

Please note: Almost all information involved in this matter is in German and/or Japanese language. We will try to provide more information also in English, but for the time being, please refer to the German and/or Japanese pages for more details.