The story of Free The Children Japan, a certified NPO, strengthening its organizational foundation

Free The Children Japan (hereinafter “FTCJ”) is the Japanese chapter of Free The Children, an organization whose mission is to “free children from poverty and child labor,” as well as to “free children from the belief that they are powerless,” and which is involved in international cooperation activities by children in developed countries.

Free The Children’s activities date back to 1995. “The founder, Canadian Craig Kielburger, was 12 years old at the time. He saw a newspaper article about a boy his age in Pakistan who had been forced to work in a carpet factory from the age of 4 to 10 due to poverty, was rescued by an NGO, gave a speech around the world, and was shot dead by someone shortly after returning home. Shocked by the article, Craig rallied his classmates, declaring, ‘Children’s issues should be addressed by children,’ and founded Free The Children,” according to Ms. Sanae Nakajima. Chairperson of the Board of Free The Children Japan.

Ms. Nakajima learned of these events through a magazine in 1997 while interning at an NGO in the United States. “After returning to Japan, I contacted the headquarters in Canada, saying, ‘I want to create a Japanese chapter,’ and in 1999, I launched the FTCJ.”

FTCJ initially struggled to attract child members, but when a 15-year-old Filipino girl who had been abused in the sex industry was invited to Japan as a speaker, high school students her age empathized with her and joined one after the other. Currently, the organization is building schools in 10 countries, including the Philippines, India, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, as well as securing water sources for daily life, providing medical care, assisting with income security, and providing emergency assistance in the event of disasters, using donations collected by the children. At the same time, the FTCJ has been organizing workshops, camps, and study tours for children in Japan to encourage them to take action, believing that “children and young people are not just people who can be helped, but that they can make a difference in society.”

“For example, on Valentine’s Day, a third-grade boy in elementary school in Shikoku who excels at baking rented a bakery and baked and sold bread. At the same time, he read a picture book about child labor to the children, which was well received. The proceeds were used to build schools and wells in India.”
The FTCJ’s activities, in which children play a significant part, are decided at the general meeting by the “child representative committee members,” who are elected from among “the child members,” ranging from elementary school kids to high school students. In addition, members over the age of 18 can also register as “youth members,” and there is no registration fee for either. The FTCJ secretariat, which supports FTCJ activities behind the scenes, is based in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, and is staffed by four full-time employees, part-time employees, and numerous volunteers.

“Our activities are supported by membership fees from adults and donations from members, but many people have asked that the money be used directly for children overseas, and we have had trouble raising funds to support the secretariat. We have a small staff, so we were busy with immediate tasks, and our organizational challenge was that we did not have a bird’s eye view of the organization’s operations.”
Therefore, in 2010, FTCJ applied for the Panasonic NPO/NGO Support Fund program. The following year, 2011, FTCJ began a three-year initiative. “We thought our first priority for fundraising was to create flyers and websites that would immediately translate into money.”
However, when the FTCJ conducted an “organizational assessment” with the assistance of an outside consultant, the organization’s first workshop prioritized “reviewing the secretariat’s operational structure,” followed by “planning and developing the content of support services” and “improving public relations tools.” The results of this assessment were then used to strengthen the organizational infrastructure from the second year of the grant.

“We also conducted a training camp where we objectively evaluated the work itself, including a review of the staff’s work system, and had in-depth discussions that we normally would not be able to have. We also created a manual for interns and volunteers to take on some of our administrative tasks.”

For example, the ‘How to Work Guidebook’ for interns includes procedures on everything from how to answer the phone to how to save data on a computer to how to write a daily report. “By compiling what we previously had to tell them verbally over and over into one guidebook, we can now simply conduct an orientation on the first day of their hiring, and the quality of their work has improved.”
“We realized that we had done very little to reach adults,” says Ms. Nakajima. “Since there were only flyers for children, we created pamphlets for schools, businesses, parents, and other adults and published an e-newsletter for school teachers and parents. We also contacted the child members’ alumni by mail and Facebook to invite them to join the alumni association.”

We created a website in the third year of the grant that was organized in such a way that “activities and participation material” could be seen at a glance. We also put in place an automatic web-based member registration system.
“We have arranged our materials and website by target audience and can now be more proactive in sending out student event invitations to schools and inviting businesses to sponsor our activities. The quality of our work has improved as our operations have become more efficient, and we no longer have to work overtime.”

The results are evident in the numbers. The number of child and youth members increased from around 300 before the grant to around 1,300 in FY2015, and the number of supporters increased from around 30 to more than 100. Along with this, the number of overseas annual beneficiaries has also increased from about 3,000 to about 8,000. Donations from individuals and organizations have also increased, and the number of staff, which was three before the grant, was increased to four this spring. Last year, the FTCJ examined how the organization had changed from before the grant to the present and discovered that the review of the administrative structure and efforts in publicity and information dissemination had resulted in significant changes in the organization’s “human resources” and “management skills,” which had led to the development of the current activities.

[Organization Profile]
A certified NPO Free The Children Japan
Founded in 1995 as the Japanese chapter of Free The Children, an organization founded in Canada. Since its establishment in 1999, FTCJ’s main activities have been “overseas self-reliance support projects” to free children in developing countries from poverty and exploitation and “domestic projects” to support children in Japan to take action to solve social problems.