Brief Introduction
for NPO National Homeless Support Network
Dear *****,
I deeply appreciate your cooperation and am sorry to burden you with
another communication regarding the issue of donations. While I am writing on behalf of the board members of our
NPO, the following replies are also based on my personal knowledge and
information about what the National Homeless Support Network has actually done.
Q1. Can you explain a bit more about
your organization in English? Has the organization received any awards in or
outside Japan?
Our NPO was first established as a nationwide network of homeless aid
organizations throughout all of Japan. The base of its establishment began with
the alliance of homeless aid organizations doing political lobbying in order to
implement the Homeless Assistance Law in 2002.
This relationship is still firmly continuing, and after the
establishment of our NPO in 2009 (preparation for its establishment began in
2007), and many board members have been nominated from among professionals
attending various council meetings with concern for the areas of welfare and
social security, housing for homeless people, and aid for the socially
disadvantaged.
As 2012 approaches, when the Homeless Assistance Law will have been in
effect for ten years, we are also pushing the Ministry of Welfare and Labor to
take the initiative of passing another law for generally disadvantaged people,
that will encompass a wider definition than the narrow one for homeless people.
At the same time, due to our lobbying of National Diet members, thirty Diet
council members have established a league for promoting the next stage of
legislation of the Homeless Act.
Last year, for the first time, Ministry of Welfare and Labor requested
our NPO to conduct three national surveys, and the attached map (see
Figure) illustrates our contact NPOs in these national surveys.
Most of them are either members or in the process of joining our NPO.
Considering the influence of our activities on policy-making (at both national
and local levels) and mobilizing the local politics of well-being, I believe
that our NPO, and each of the local NPOs in our membership, are each one of a
leading NPO in their local areas, not only in aid for the homeless, but also in
urban regeneration for the disadvantaged in inner city areas. In
particular, one prominent figure of NPO under our NPOfs membership is now
acting energetically as a special assistant for the Prime Ministerfs Office in
Japan.
You can see the recent transformation of homeless assistance
activities in this PDF file, which was presented in Taipei
last month on March 9, 2011 (translated into Chinese).
Q2. I see there are some 60 NPO
organization members forming the National Homeless Support Network. (
http://www.homeless-net.org/html/members.html). But it is not easy to
understand these since they are all in Japanese. Can you name a few well-known
and reputable member organizations of your network? I saw the name of a
provincial YMCA there.
It is a pity, but it must be said that many of the well-known and
established organizations in these humanitarian activities did not play a
pioneering role in tackling homeless issues. Rather, grass-roots organizations
played the main role in making progress within this movement. We estimate that
there are nearly 200 homeless aid organizations, and our national survey,
financed by the Ministry of Welfare and Labor, visited 104 of these
organizations (see Figure), and we also have very good
relations with the nearly 40 remaining organizations (this is in addition to
the 65 members of our NPO). To keep the public and interested parties up to
date on our progress, we plan to report on our activities regularly in English,
and we promise that our website will be up soon.
Thank you for your cooperation.
With my best wishes,
Toshio
Toshio MIZUUCHI
Urban Research Plaza / Dept. of Geography
Osaka City University, Osaka, JAPAN
