Full transcript follows.
When the Great Northern Japan triple disaster struck in 2011, Angela’s instinct was to go towards the devastation to help in any way she could. Her experiences in those early days led her on the path to where she is today as a leader in social impact and corporate social responsibility.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- Angela’s experience growing up in Kanto and then in Aomori
- The events of March 11, 2011 and how Angela found a way to help the disaster area
- The importance of volunteers not hindering a disaster response effort
- What the survivors in Tohoku asked for once they started to heal and recover
- How the Santa Soul Train emerged to give local leaders a chance to innovate
- How people inspire people and why continuing to just “show up” matters
About Angela:
Angela Ortiz is a dynamic and authentic social impact professional with 9+ years experience across business sectors and cultures. She is an in demand public speaker and has recently published a book on leadership in social impact.
She founded and leads a community building nonprofit Place To Grow, established in the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear meltdown.
In addition, she has 6+ years in Corporate Social Responsibility, leading initiatives with various global companies like the fashion retailer H&M and the iconic sports brand, adidas.
Connect with Angela:
Stratechist: https://stratechist.com/
Place to grow: https://placetogrow-ngo.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-ortiz-35689443/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/socialimpactmarketingconsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stratechistmastermind/
Place to grow: https://www.instagram.com/placetogrowngo/
Connect with Jackie:
Website: https://en-joi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-f-steele-phd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoidiversityandinnovation
https://www.facebook.com/jackiefsteelephd
Instagram: www.instagram.com/enjoi_diversity_innovation/
Transcript
Jackie: Welcome to Diversity rocks innovation!
My name is Jackie Steele and I am a longtime Canadian political scientist. And I’ve been living and teaching in Japan for quite some time. And I’m also the founder and CEO of enjoi Diversity and Innovation here based in Japan. As a global facing business that we are working in English and Japanese and even sometimes in French, we are committed to providing research, policy and evidence-based DNI training and education for leaders, executives, and corporate professionals on the importance of intersectional diversity, accessibility, holistic corporate policy ecosystems that empower individuals and of course, innovation that supports the holistic well-being of equality, and that powers our people systems for personal and collective good.
We at enjoi know, and we fundamentally believe, that diversity rocks and it certainly rocks innovation, and this live stream was created really with a goal to shine a spotlight on the beautiful diversity of over a hundred enjoi Diversity and Innovation thought partners, individuals who I have met and been inspired by who I thought partner with and learn from.
And each of these individuals are making individual efforts in Japan predominantly, but also some of them are across Asia Pacific and they are bringing their individuality in radical ways to bring forward inclusion. To bring forward a diversity positive way of being in the world. And they’re celebrating gender equal leadership.
And they’re doing this all with their own unique flavor and radical individuality. So we want to honor that and feature that and make that visible in Japan. This we believe to be normal and also aspirational, diversity rocks innovation. And so through this live stream, in particular, we will engage in a particular exercise or practice that I call thought partnering out loud.
And I learned about this idea of thought partnering from a leadership coach some three years ago, four years ago now, in the United States. And it really struck me as an important practice of building solidarity with another individual. “Hey, could you thought partner with me on something? I’m just sort of struggling to get my thoughts together on this, that or the other.
And I would really love your insights. Could we thought partner?”. And this was the way it was offered as a gift, to me, and I thought, wow! I really want to have that kind of a possibility with the individuals who I find inspiring and who I want to learn from. So this is a pillar practice, if you will, of how enjoi as a business is trying to move the dial on building democratic equality, solidarity building. How do we have reciprocal giving of ourselves? To others, right? Where we share our expertise. And then how can we use this practice to build community, to build a movement and a coalition of interesting diversity positive leaders in Japan and stakeholders who want to fan out and work together to really be the change so we can really make sure that in the Rewa era of Japan really diversity can rock innovation here and create more well-being. So the live stream format is basically me featuring one of my enjoi DNI thought partners each week. And we come together just as two individuals. We throw out the business cards and the titles and then this and that.
And we just talk to each other as human beings. And we can hopefully role model a sort of horizontality and again, egalitarian spirit of coming together, sharing our diversities, our complexities, our gray zones, our radical individuality, and this without all of the, I guess, toxic baggage of some of the hierarchies that can slow us down due to gender or race or sexual orientation or disability or nationality or other things that can be a break on solidarity for sure.
And also can, sometimes those toxic dynamics can be a break on innovation. And they can slow us down. So we want to throw it out the window and just say, hey, let’s meet up as individuals and thought partner out loud, live to the world. I invite you to come enjoy the gray zones of all of these facets of our identities and our diversities.
And let’s just enjoy 55 minutes together on a journey of seeking these nuances out. So we can think about how diversity rocks and enriches, blesses our families, our colleagues, our workplaces, and how we can move forward the project of democratic self government with solidarity and equality and inclusion.
Not only in our homes, not only in our workplaces or our communities and our countries, they’re really in all of the spaces that we navigate. I am so excited to feature today’s guest, who is the second leader to be featured in our special series in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the triple disaster that hit Tohoku Japan on March 11th, some 10 years ago already. あっというま, 10 years, cannot believe how quickly that has gone.
Most of the special series’ guests are young Japanese women leaders who are living in Tohoku and who have been following their sort of grassroots leadership works through a participatory research project I had with an NPL called Women’s Eye. And of the six features most of them are in Japanese featuring these young Japanese women in Tohoku.
But in the last four years, I had the very amazing opportunity to meet someone in Tokyo, who I had not realized was active in the Minami Sanriku , Tohoku area. Doing some really awesome social impact work. And we connected again just recently last year to collaborate around her amazing book launch, where she really features some of the thought leadership and the ideas that she has gained through her work with an NPO in Tohoku.
So today’s guest is someone who I hope we can learn from. And we all definitely will learn from, we can be inspired by. So I would love to welcome Angela Ortiz today to the show for this livestream to speak about the Tohoku triple disaster, 10 years later, the social impact work that NPO Place To Grow has been doing under the leadership of this amazing woman.
So Angela, welcome to Diversity rocks innovation!
Angela: Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. What an honor.
Jackie: I would love, if you could, certainly many people know of your work and know you in the Tokyo area and also across Tohoku, but there’s people joining us from around the world who maybe this is their first time learning about the genius that is Angela Ortiz.
So I wanted us to take a step back and first start off with, if you had to pick, and I’m obviously a fan of saying we have complex diversities in each individual, and so if you had to pick five of your top diversities or your top identities that make you you… five or six, I don’t know how many you might have, but I think that complexity is fun to think about.
So where would you begin your self-introduction?
Angela: It would begin with curiosity. I’m an incredibly curious person. A bit fearless and tenacious, anything that sounds like an adventure, I’m kind of like, yes, okay. And I’m really positive. Like I’m very mae muki (Forward looking). Like I know that a lot of problems happen and I am from a huge family.
So I grew up with conflict being part of everyday life. So I’m one of those people that’s just really like positive and creative, curious, tenacious and adventurous
Jackie: And resilient, surely because of all of those siblings that made you have a high tolerance for conflict and for different things that can happen in your life.
What resilience we get from our family contexts, right?
Angela: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Resilience is a great word. I’m adding that in there.
Jackie: Can you share a little bit about that family journey that you experienced?
Angela: Absolutely. I’m one of 11 siblings. We are from the US, Columbia, and I’d like to put in Italy because my father grew up in Italy. So he’s a third culture kid. And then he married my mother who is from the US and at five children, they decided to move from California where I was born, to Japan.
Jackie: At five children?
Angela: At five children.
Jackie: Wow. Your parents have tremendous resilience.
Angela: It’s incredible. So I definitely get the adventurous side from my parents.
I learned this later. They had five more children in Japan and moved to, we spent some time in the Kanto area, just outside of Tokyo. And then eventually they moved to the Northern most city on the Honshu island Aomori and they, to this day live there. They have an international kindergarten. And when my mom turned 60, she bought a motorbike and they now fill our family chat with pictures of them touring, of nature, of Tohoku, mountains, cherry blossoms, yeah.
Jackie: What spurred the move? Because moving to Japan was about adventure? Was it for a certain professional area that you needed to be in Japan for? Or was it really just pure, let’s try something new?
Angela: Let’s try something new.
But this was also, this was the mid eighties or even early mid eighties where the English teaching boom was happening over here. So my father was obviously, so it was like, we want to go somewhere else. Oh, there’s these great business opportunities in Japan. If you can teach English. And so they followed that calling.
Jackie: Talk about, it’s interesting because many of us are familiar with the Japan Exchange and Teaching program, which the Ministry of Education Monbusho runs. And they bring in all these young people from across Japan, but there’s so many other opportunities also outside of that program.
And you wonder now, like when the Japanese government, you wonder, now they’re all sitting around the table, probably these fairly senior men thinking about this program, how do we internationalize Japan? How do we bring people, young people who could speak English? I wonder if they thought they would be bringing in this family of 13. Now you think about it like ingenious, right? Like we’re in a declining population, like an aging society, we don’t know how to have more children be born in Japan because there’s not enough support in the economy and there’s a long working day.
And so having children is a challenge for two working households and even for single parents, it’s even harder. And so you have a declining birth rate that’s consistently plaguing Japan and here with this one teaching opportunity, they got 13. Plus 13 out of your family. That’s fascinating. I hope that’s, I hope that they’re listening and taking note, like how important bringing in, right, foreign talent, if you will, to Japan can be such an interesting support to not only, rocking innovation, bringing you these new voices, but also in terms of like increasing population base through these interesting dynamics. So from that perspective, they were not challenged sufficiently with the Kanto area of teaching English and thought they’d go really rural and go to the Northernmost point of Japan?
What led to that? Courageous.
Angela: That was a business decision. My father worked for a private kindergarten business in the Kanto area and that’s what kept us there for years and we had our visa through that, his business there, but then there was an acquaintance of theirs who owned property in Aomori and really wanted to bring in Eikaiwa international education to the Aomori region.
So we went up there for six months to help them set it up. And then my father, the visiting period, to go check out the business and kind of get the orientation was right during the sakura season. The cherry blossom season. And Aomori has one of the most famous parks, the Hirosakijo castle.
And I think for my father, because even when we were in Kanto, I remember every summer we’d be in a camper van in Gunma or Chichibu or somewhere really mountain filled in nature. So when he moved up there, him and my mom just had a conversation and they were just deciding; well, I know we came up here just for a few days or a few months but could we see ourselves here? And the long of it was, yes. So I think that the move to Aomori was, because of a few reasons and a few points probably about their core personalities that just really connected to that area.
Jackie: More and more people, and certainly COVID is forcing this kind of an introspection, more individuals are thinking about quality of life and what does it mean to live in a highly densely populated major megalopolis city and all of the complexities of that. Is it resilient in a disaster prone country? It was, we have pandemics, right? What is the beauty also of a return to, maybe a slower, less hectic, not doing the hour and a half train commute in the train like this…
And having greenery and nature and mountains and exposure to that for children to play outdoors and not be in crowded streets where there’s nowhere and there’s not really anywhere to play easily outside. Unless you waza waza (make an effort) go all the way to a park nearby to finally get that fresh green space.
I think this is, we are at a pivotal moment, hopefully in history in 2021. Now it’s been a year of pandemic officially, right? At least a year. If we think from the Japanese timeline of when schools shut down last March. People have now had a year to say; is this my happiness? And so the fact that your parents were so forward-thinking and going, this is an interesting place to live with the beauty around you.
And if you have the security of your work, what gives a better balance overall? And so I think you spoke to me about growing up and how your mother was such a strong leader and she homeschooled you and some of your siblings. But that was up to a certain number of children.
And then there was a dynamic where there was; been there, done that. Maybe like let’s do another, let’s have another challenge. How did that affect you in terms of your experience growing up in Aomori?
Angela: Massively, because I had a very limited Japanese language ability, but also understanding of the cultural aspects. Having never gone to Japanese school, I had a very American upbringing and although we learned the language and we had like a Bukasai kind of events where I learned about Momotarou the peach boy and the folklore, I didn’t really have a lot of Japanese friends.
So the sudden move to Aomori was like night and day for me, because I was already older middle school and with no Japanese speaking abilities, the public school said, sorry, she can’t integrate here.
Jackie: Sorry.
Angela: I was suddenly, yeah, I don’t actually understand the whys and wherefores cause now I would have gone back to them going, no, that’s completely not…
Jackie: And by law, there’s a legal obligation, right?
Angela: Of course she could integrate and pick up the language. So I went to learning the language three days a week at some local volunteer center. And my siblings went to Japanese school, but they still needed to be homeschooled in English on top of that.
The homeschooling component was always a part of my upbringing. And so it was really funny for me last year, when a whole bunch of parents on social media are freaking out about homeschooling. It’s like also having raised my own daughter in the Japanese school system and having to homeschool her in English.
Jackie: In English.
Angela: I was like, oh yeah, yeah. It definitely has its challenges. Luckily when we moved to Aomori, I found out that they had one of the most extensive English libraries. Near one of the universities. And so a lot of my time in middle school and high school, because I was quite alone and I didn’t, there was no prom, there was no sporting events or something.
I really just became a bit of an introvert and I love to read. And in hindsight, I’m very grateful for that time. But at the time, yeah, moving to Aomori was very painful.
Jackie: Yes. And so is it you and your older siblings that have a common experience of homeschooling and feeling a little bit crash coursed into Japanese cultural context in Aomori, but the younger ones were more integrated into the public school, right?
Does that create interesting, it’s almost like you’ve got a triple international family dynamic because you’ve got your parents’ common culture together as a couple and their philosophy of how they’re living. And then you’ve got half the kids who are part homeschool and then moved to Aomori, and then the other ones who were more integrated into the Japanese side. What does that look like? Like a cross-cultural dynamic in the family?
Angela: There is absolutely. But the one thing that is stronger and more powerful than any of those, dynamics is the core family dynamic of who we are, how we love to spend time to be with each other, our sense of adventure, our love for food, you know, you can see like the Latin culture, the American culture.
And then what I love to see is that we did pick up on the Japanese culture. And so we all are quite… well, we’re huge fans of the politeness and the “wa” (peace) and understanding this sort of, you don’t always have to be Mr Individual or Miss Individual in order to have a good time or to connect with another person.
And I think that dynamic gave us a sense of core; this is who we are, right? This is our foundation as human beings, and definitely brought self esteem and self strength to us as human beings. But we have loads of disagreements and loads of different attitudes and everyone’s got a different agenda and a political point of view and yeah, it’s a complete shit show sometimes.
Jackie: You know what? And diversity rocks innovation in great positive ways. And it also rocks us into a discomfort. It rocks our worldviews to be confronted by people who we think; what? We grew up together. How can you possibly think how, what? We’re from the same family? How can you possibly have that idea?
Angela: And yet it exists.
Jackie: And yet that is the vibrancy that we get. And that’s the vibrancy of certainly, I’m always pulling on, in democratic theory and self-government theories, we’re always looking at how do you get a democracy to be vibrant and yutaka (rich) right?
And you need that competition of ideas, which means you need other worldviews and different perspectives to really come in and enrich the discussions and the debates and the dialogues. And man, you can just have your own parliament within your family.
Angela: We can have our own soccer team.
Jackie: Yeah. You could just field and make city council. That’s fascinating. From there when, and so I don’t really know Aomori so much as I’ve spent time in Sendai and Miyagi. Aside from the research I’ve been doing, since the last 10 years, but so Aomori, what is the connection between the sense of identity, being from Aomori and how that ties to Tohoku. Is there a sense that that’s part of the Tohoku, classic Tohoku regional identity, or is there a sort of a…
Angela: There are a lot of similarities, like in all the Tohoku, like just to keep it simple, like the Tohoku prefectural promotion that you might see at Tokyo station.
And the whole four seasons and the food and the onsen. So its almost like they’re all siblings or cousins of the same, with the same basic offering. For myself, I didn’t connect too much to the Eastern coastline because growing up in the center of Aomori, the only thing I remembered was long drives down to Tokyo and sometimes some great beach spots along the way.
But in 2004 or 05, my older sister moved to Fukushima. My niece was born in Fukushima and Shirakawa. So we used to gather there. So like the siblings that lived in Tokyo, we used to gather in Fukushima and go out to the coast and spend a day at the beach or two. Then my younger brother moved to Sendai. And then, so we used to visit him.
Actually. I was planning to visit him for the first time, since he had gotten married and had his daughter, it was supposed to be that Golden Week. And then the 3-11 disaster happened. So I had never actually been to Sendai to experience that, until the disaster hit, but what I recall very clearly was, as I mentioned, those long drives, right, down.
So when the disaster hit and I was watching on the news, the different cities affected, I suddenly started to have these ideas. Oh, I remember sitting with the old Atlas maps as a navigator for my father, and those town names would be on the maps. And so that was like, oh, I know these places. What do I know about these places? But the Aomori connection then also came through people, right? When I was in Aomori, I worked, my first part-time job was at Hotel Aomori. And one of my colleagues from there was then living in Minami Sanriku, at the time of the disaster and that was the connection that brought me personally to Minami Sanriku.
Jackie: And what was your initial reactions at the time? I was in Sendai and I realized I didn’t even understand the size of what we were dealing with because I have never experienced an earthquake ever, to know that if it goes on for a whole minute and you can’t walk because the building is like a big ferry, that’s just completely destabilized, or rocking appropriately, according to the architectural build. Flexibility. Thank God. But if you don’t know, you don’t understand the sort of size and magnitude of what then was going to transpire. And I actually didn’t know and understand the impact of the tsunami until 24 hours later, because I heard the alerts, but didn’t understand until I saw it on the TV at one of the restaurants, someone who said, come, we have heat, bring the baby, come, just come, bring the baby, come. We’ve got heat, come, we’ve got food and heat come. So saw on the TV for the first time and went like: Oh! Could never have imagined, never, because it’s just not a part of my Canadian upbringing to understand that phenomenon.
So you were in Aomori at the time, or you were by this time elsewhere?
Angela: I was in Tokyo and the first personal connection was, as I mentioned, my younger brother was living in Sendai. So we were seeing messages between him and his wife on Facebook, where his wife said, you know, where are you? And he says, stay away from the bridges, they’re not safe. And of course we can’t call him.
So we’re hoping that he’s evacuating and is safe. But my brother, he’s a very fierce soul. And so he, of course, after they evacuated, he went back in to assess what was going on, and what was the scale of what was going on? We only had the bird’s eye view of television, which was horrendous.
Jackie: It was horrendous to just see that.
Angela: It was more horrendous than the footage that we saw on, when I was 13 or 12, when the Kobe disaster happened, just because of the way that tsunami looks. So that was incredibly, I guess it was just impactful in the sense that I could feel something really horrendous was going on.
My brother’s up there. And my family had been calling me from Aomori saying; we’re putting together a volunteer group, because our father had been hired by some journalist and by chance had made his way to Minami Sanriku, talked to survivors. They had asked for very simple items, like hand lotion, diapers, clothing.
And we were not a registered organization yet. So legally we were able to just put everything in our vans or our trucks and drive down there and deliver it. Key point though, is that we wouldn’t have been able to do that had my father not been hired by the journalists, because journalists get this pass from the police.
And as you might know, in Japan, it’s much easier to go renew something already approved, than just go and say; hey, we’re a bunch of foreigners who want to bring supplies down. All these tiny moments that really enabled the next step. Includes funding and the fact that my older sister happened to be visiting from Australia and they started a Facebook page.
I wasn’t even on Facebook at this time and funding started coming in and so we rented trucks and we called people to give supplies. And then on the 19th, we drove down to Minami Sanriku. I met up with Ryosuke, my colleague from Aomori. Just so happened that their hotel was not completely damaged.
And they were desperate for volunteers to come to support in any way that we could. And that started the connection and that ended up being the location, that to this day, we’re still based out of an old kouminkan, like old cultural center that is on the property of this hotel.
Jackie: And there in, began the seeds of place to grow.
Angela: Yes. I did think that after two, three weeks of volunteering, I would finish and go back to Tokyo and give it up. What happened was two, three weeks went by and I remember that I was working as a kindergarten teacher at this time in Tokyo.
And I went back because the boss said; okay, we’re resuming school. And I just could not find myself there. I was still getting calls all day long from people up in Tohoku asking me what to do and where these trucks should be. And I was like; guys, I can’t be doing this. I’m in the bathroom, taking these calls.
And so I had a talk with my boss and I said; this seems to be calling me. Is there any way that… Cause I was a couple months shy of my contract and they all really supported it. And so I resigned and I went back to Minami Sanriku to help lead what ended up becoming a food and water distribution system to about 3,000 people.
Jackie: And from a political scientist perspective, what I find fascinating is how we learn from, like you say, had the journalist not asked your father to be involved there wouldn’t have been the ability and the permission. And so how do we build out these different rules and regulations around a post disaster response strategy where we don’t get trapped by red tape that is unhelpful, right? There’s certainly rules and regulations we need for safety and for privacy and for all of these different pieces. And certainly, there’s different ways in which having a whole bunch of people descend on a region doesn’t help the region, if those individuals can’t care for themselves and look after themselves and then are a further drain on the very scarce resources that the locals need.
And so there’s a whole ethic and an ethics of care about how do you volunteer and do humanitarian aid in a way that is mindful of not being an imposition, right, on the locals who are like; they have enough to deal with. They don’t need a bunch of, also individuals who are out of, fish out of water and don’t know how to cope.
But in light of that, how do, if you had just even a takeaway around that, what if, like what would have been the dynamic? Because I know certainly others in Sendai, my taiko sensei (drumming teacher), for example, had some kind of a pass. He got some kind of a pass for his car. So then they could drive up and they would bring, they would get all of the resources from the community and then he would go and he would drive up and carry things up.
But he had to get that special pass to have authorization to get on the roads, to be let through with the resources to deliver them. So in terms of those processes, have you had an opportunity to also hear about what kinds of changes we would want to also integrate to make the post-disaster process more smooth?
Angela: Yes. Before I go into that, just on the topic of don’t be an imposition as a volunteer. That is the reason I wrote the book: Place to grow. How to be an effective leader. I should have written it: Don’t be an imposition. Cos it’s a catchier title.
A lot of ideas for why you should be thinking, how you should frame your mindset in order to not be an imposition and also frame your heart. Because it will be traumatic for you. Especially a disaster of this size. The people, the situation, the visual devastation was just overwhelming and for years it’s that way.
And even today, it is emotionally trying to hear some of the stories and even hear what people are dealing with. But when it comes to the overall, let’s say… recovery versus preparedness, this is where it’s really interesting. The preparedness plan is more important than the recovery response, because the preparedness is where you already have a plan for how people will work together in the event of X, Y, Z.
Now one thing we lacked in 3-11 was Plan B C, D all the way to Z in the case, you know, something else happened. Or in the case that more than the town was destroyed. You had 600 kilometers destroyed. That means you can’t just go to the next town and find resources. You’re completely reliant for months.
And then international aid; how do you handle these types of, this influx? One thing that could help, and I think we’ve made some progress on this, is; then really understanding the flow and experience of the survivors. What does happen? And as you mentioned, there are going to be people within the community who have leadership skills and have connections. They have their own social capital that exists already in those towns, that they can rely on. So if you understand how the social fabric of rural Japan works, you’ll be in a much better place to know who to identify, to ask; do you need this kind of support?
And I know that in the following disasters throughout Japan, post 3-11 towns were very quick to set up an NPO call center. Where NPOs, and everybody could just call these people to find out whatever questions you need, which was definitely a learning from the 3-11 disasters. What I saw in 3-11 was really very raw human initiative, hit or miss, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not, but having to do what they needed to do in order to try and get either the support they needed or to continue facilitating support.
Jackie: The activities that you pursued, you started off with the water and other supply chain side of things, because we need to start pragmatically with what is protecting life. And then from after that, you morphed into perhaps more… I don’t know if you would necessarily call it like “kokoro no care”, but caring for individuals at an emotional and holistic sense of helping them re-find hope through some of the activism, programming and rebuilding, I guess, their sense of community with one another and with others, can you talk about that a little bit?
Angela: Yes. Initially we decided to approach kokoro no care or that emotional support actually through business. Because also at that period, there was just so much depression and so much anxiety and stress going on that there was, I’m just going to use business terms, there was a market for tea ceremonies and cake parties.
And we did those whenever we could. And we had loads of partners who came up and all we did was find the space and the people, but we pushed all our energy into helping local farmers regain old farmland that had become just overrun fields. And I’ve realized that it was that act of physical activity that people needed.
They needed to fill their time with something productive. And really if at the end of that effort, there could actually be a financial reward, that was a win-win. So 2012 to 2014 was really full on with the Green Farmer’s Miyagi project, where we help people revitalize farmland. That also brought in volunteers and created loads of space for us to have these community building events.
And then in 2015 we split because it wasn’t sustainable to do both. It was starting to just become this giant organization. We didn’t have the resources. So my colleague and I at the time, he took the business farm and realized he was going to be settling in that area. And he got married to a lovely woman from Iwate
And then I really focused, observing the last six years and going; okay, how do we help these people? When their homes are starting to rebuild. And the response I got from them was, we stand on our own two feet, kind of barely now. When we were doing food and water, they were really like; no, emotionally we’re drained, help.
Now, they’re like; oh, we’re doing okay. But toriaezu soba ni itte kudasai.
Jackie: Stay near us.
Angela: Stay near us, don’t leave.
How do we stay, how do we bring value? So that meant we had to reevaluate everything. And that was the beginning though, of the Place to Grow philosophy of people inspire people, and healthy body, healthy mind and inclusion and support.
How do we not create long term division and dependency, but actually use our activities to bring people closer together. People who may otherwise not get on in this town, for example, or not have the social, the bridging capital to a neighboring city or even to their own local government.
And so the activities, we did workshops and events that just helped people come together.
Jackie: And it’s, this is a challenge within humanitarian aid. It’s a challenge within international cooperation work. How do you provide services that foster the self-determination of the individual community to be self-determining and to be autonomous, to regain that autonomy.
So like jiritsu (independence), right? Like we don’t wish to have this external force come in and create a dependency that then long-term, doesn’t actually empower long-term for individual communities to be regaining their sense of self-government. Ultimately they need to have self-government on their own terms for themselves, and there’s a way to support that.
But sometimes we do see a lot of aid or that kind of, those kinds of activities not necessarily leading to the empowering long-term sustainability type of dynamics. So bridging and connecting, but making sure that the autonomy piece is the ultimate output of the efforts. And I think one thing you’ve spoken to me about was how the Santa soul train activity started as a celebration that gave people hope and an opportunity to come together and a place of having joy as an activity with one another, but that you were able to pivot that so that then they were leading the show on the stage. And I think you talked about the dancing, the dancers of the local schools, wanting to do their own dance, and then again, having a role to play, right?
Angela: Let’s use what you just spoke about, like that sort of serious academic narrative, like as a structure, right?
So what happened was we were there and I just wanted to cheer people up and I’ve always loved Christmas. So I talked to some of our sponsors and we got together enough turkey and gravy and pie and wine, to just throw them a kind of traditional international, I guess it’s North American Christmas party and band came down and before we knew it, it was like 125 people there.
These guys were on their feet dancing. And I remember, I asked specifically, can you bring candy canes? Because it’s not something we see much in rural Japan and I was going to give it to all the children. And then I heard this one grandfather go; oh, I’ve seen that on television once. And I remember going; okay, scratch that plan, give it to everybody, just laugh and make them feel excited for a night.
And I thought that would be it. But the next September, they came to me and were like; so Angela, do you think we could do that event again? And I was like; sure, why not? 450 people showed up.
Jackie: Of course, people need parties and dance.
Angela: They did half of the cooking and the preparing and they organized. So it was an organic way of where we as outsiders could provide that value of; oh, here’s ideas, here’s something that’s beyond your comfort zone of understanding and maybe even expertise.
But if you guys want it, so the ownership, the autonomy is on them. What do you guys think? And then how do we take this idea that maybe is external, but implement it in a way that makes sense and brings value to your community?
So it was hour after hour of conversations of sometimes them shutting me down. Sometimes me just throwing out really bad ideas. But eventually that series of conversations ends up with, you have some very interesting, very versatile leaders, that are locally based and locally grown, but have a connection to someone or a community like me, who can be that sort of space for them to open their minds creatively and innovatively.
Jackie: There is that space, right? I think one of the, in some ways, wonderful things about what we call international exchange or cross-cultural communication or whatever we want, how we want to couch that, multicultural conviviality, there’s a different bunch of terms around this… is people do allow themselves to tap into different parts of their own creativity when they’re outside of a Japanese only box, because it’s like; oh, this is freeing and there’s no rules about, I have to read the air and be careful about the hierarchy and I’m allowed, am I allowed to speak now? Is it okay?
Am I okay to have ideas as a young person who wants to have this party have, the junior high school girls want to do their dance? Is that okay? And so you get that sense of freedom, right? When you’re in that kind of cosmopolitan cross-cultural, and as you can bring different people through and along into that space, you can really open up something that would never have happened otherwise, in this city. Right? Would never have happened, wouldn’t it?
Angela: Yeah, absolutely. And then every year it was just an evolution of local leaders taking further ownership and designing the entertainment and designing the food and then saying; let’s do it that way. And for personal reasons, there were times where I just actually couldn’t do as much work as I used to, hands-on.
So it was almost like, because I was transparent with them and said; this is the max that I can do in 2015 for example, when I went into corporate. They stepped up and people said; okay, we want this to keep happening. So we’re going to, we’re going to put in more ideas. And I felt like that was, it was just such a beautiful project to evolve and be a part of, just watching that evolution.
I learned so much about also not being afraid to say that my means have changed or my skills and expertise, my time and energy have shifted. And if people are aligned and you have that same vision, other people step up.
Jackie: And they can, in some ways it’s a gift because it’s like: oh, she needs to lean out.
Which means now she needs us. We need to now give, we can give back and we can help Angela.
Angela: Yes, I didn’t realize how, cause at first I was embarrassed to do that, but then what I realized was that is so key to not fostering dependency. Because they’re looking at me going; oh, okay, you’re not just this knight in shining armor gaijin humanitarian worker, you’re actually just a human and you have issues and problems and family that you are also living with. But we care about this, what we’ve been doing together. So what more can I bring? And suddenly they’re shifting, they shifted from victims to survivors… resilience. The women that I know up there, especially are just, their humor and their resiliency and strength.
And again, go back to the humor really in people.
Jackie: And I think, you’ve written obviously this amazing book with all of the different principles that you’ve gleaned out of your social impact work in the post disaster context. Can you briefly, maybe share, I know you have several that you love, but I think there’s one in particular you like to highlight. What, I mean, obviously everyone should buy the book and it’s excellent.
Angela: Renaming this: Eight principles to not mess it up. Yeah, no, my favorite is the principle eight which is people inspire people. Because that one, I think, was my most personal struggle with, I think I always was hoping for a bigger NGO or a wiser leader to come in and help lead things.
I wondered why we were still succeeding when there were so many times, I just honestly didn’t have the Japanese skills, to have the meetings with, let’s say the chijikai, the town fathers, and these political figures. So I had to rely on the grassroots approach and these women, cause I could sit down and have coffee and tea or drinks with these ladies and then they would go and execute and go talk to the board of education and get other cooperation that we did in place.
But then it occurred to me over many different situations, I finally realized, I was like; God, it’s that I keep showing up. Someone told me this and you just keep showing up and you keep making us feel like we matter. And I was like; wow, so just that little bit of inspiring you has made you so strong.
And then they’re the ones that actually have taken Santa’s soul train to what it is today or made the children’s workshops that we do. I just continually find another way that I’m supporting their next vision. And it’s often a co-created vision, but they’re very clear; okay, and we need you to do this and then we’ll manage this side.
Jackie: And there is this, we talk about in the, community building, it’s really helpful to have, the outsider the yosomono and the crazy person in the bakamono and also the young person, the wakamono who thinks outside the box and is just starry-eyed.
So these three different pieces, in some ways, it’s an, it’s like a, it’s an internal gaiatsu. It’s an internal, external pressure, to come up, have you keep coming up. Keep coming up. They then have a mandate of action to go to the board of education and say; hey, we’re trying to do this, and Angela is coming up from, she has all these partners in Tokyo who want to support. So yoroshiku onegaishimasu. Let’s have collaboration for these pieces, but you help give them a mandate to make change that maybe otherwise, without that external nudging, they might get shut down. Their ideas might not go through. They might be told it’s not possible.
Angela: It’s hard. That burnout is so real when you’re left on your own. And that’s one of the big values of continuing to volunteer is, you help mitigate or just ease the stress that caused the burnout for people who are literally rebuilding houses and home, day in and day out.
Jackie: Exactly. 10 years later. There’s still so much to do.
Angela: I always say there’s three very specific ways you can help, right? Move to that location. You can move there and become a resident. You can stay connected and visit, which is why, really that’s why we do volunteers. Or you can even do, I think in Japan, you can have your taxes part of that community, and then they send you a product. There’s just, coming out of 3-11, I see this everywhere and in other organizations… Just this like, when we’ve gone through such a traumatic, collectively traumatic ordeal, the most simple thing is what really gives us the biggest strength. And that’s please don’t forget what we’ve been through.
Jackie: Right.
And check in on us. Keep checking on us and let us talk to you about what’s happening and let us work where we can collaborate, or not, but just even the check-in is so therapeutic. You’re now pivoting towards an interesting new project that I’d love for you to just share a little bit about. Stratechist is the new project.
Angela: Initiative. Stratechist Consulting. So I want to help companies design their impact marketing strategies basically. And this would be specifically around the, I guess the expertise or the niche of NPO local government corporate social impact projects. How do you make long-term change?
As companies are moving into the space of CSR and nonprofit, we’ve seen a lot of shifting, some innovation. Some is just a lot of confusion. What I hope to do with Stratechist Consulting is help build impactful projects that are collective impact for companies. And then I also have an eight week course for the aspiring social impact leader who wants to pivot into this as a career.
Jackie: Excellent. And what I see, certainly from my perspective is, you can mobilize all so many different communities and networks that you are navigating in. And so you can be a bridge across corporate local government, NPOs, professionals and corporate, there are so many different and all of those different communities often I find, sometimes, not just in Japan, but also particularly sometimes in rural Japan, but also within Tokyo even, there can be silos where they’re not reaching out. Certainly also academia is another space that certainly can play a role. And there’s really interesting research on social impact and the role of social capital in post disaster communities.
And certainly I’ve been working on disaster risk and how we integrate diversity into those post disaster contexts. So bringing those people and stakeholders, like getting a multi-stakeholder approach. We talk about this in the International Agreement, the UN International Agreement that was adopted in 2015, that the Sendai framework for action is supposed to be in for DIR is supposed to be bringing a multi-sector stakeholder, whole of society approach for the rebuilding post disaster.
But really be it post disaster or just peace times, we’re always in community building. We’re always in a period of democratization as seeking self-government that’s working effectively. And if we don’t get out of our silos, I think we will miss out on those high impact opportunities. And so getting people like you, who, “kao ga hiroi”.
If you’ve got, it doesn’t translate well in English, but if you’ve got high, big, like you’ve got profile in a lot of different spaces and connections and communities and networks. You can be a bridge, right? You can say; oh, do you know this person? Because you should really be working together with, oh, you want to do that? And you want to do that and you hear it from both sides and then say, okay, I’m going to introduce you so that you guys can collaborate.
Angela: Yeah. I wanna take it one step further because the introduction is great, and I’ve been on the receiving end of that. Nice. But then what? Those are the hard conversations to have. How do you get all five of us to realize a single mission and know what are our individual roles, responsibilities, and also, the reward for that.
That like little space, I think that’s where I’m really hoping to use my experience. And also my love for strategies, to come in and be like; oh yeah, we can work together like this!
Jackie: Yeah. And you see the big picture of which people’s strengths are and where the organizational strengths are to then say if we, but getting that coordination, getting agreement.
And that’s really, that’s deliberative democracy in action, right there. Getting five people to come to the table and hammer out, what are the rules of engagement? How do we want to work together? What’s the big goal we share and vision. And then how do we each contribute to move it forward in a way that’s all win-win.
And having that key person who can do that brokering and guiding and helping the co-creation process forward is so important, indefinitely, for all democracies worldwide. That is a role obtained agency we really need. So I’m always very excited to see your next projects and we’ll look forward to the next things.
And I’m so glad that you’re in the enjoi thought partner network, because certainly that’s what we’re trying to do. And just getting people to know each other, like to see each other and to find each other and then to say; okay, where are those opportunities to bring diversity positive leadership with social impact for good by design and by intentionality.
So I’ve certainly learned a lot from you and I’m very thankful for this thought partnering today and also moving forward. You’re one like minute or under a minute vision for where you want to see things shift in the world.
Angela: I think, in this space of charity, philanthropy, cause marketing, and there are so many different words, which I think are all the same thing.
It’s just that people often think that for social enterprise, it’s got to be this big vision and you need to have thousands of stakeholders. But yesterday a woman was telling me she wants to be one degree of change for each of us. If she says, if there is more unfuckwithable woman out there, if it’s just one degree more because of you, she’s like I’m happy.
And I was thinking about, well in the field, like in my field here of social and environmental sustainability. Yeah. If it’s just one of you that instead of putting a hat on, think of it as, how am I integrating these principles into my lifestyle. Now that could be phasing out plastic, that could be volunteering at your local women’s shelter, or with animals.
It could be anything that speaks to your heart, but don’t look at it as; oh, I’m going to do this while I’m in college or university. I’m going to make a way for this to be part of my core identity. This is part of who I am and how I make a change in the world. And I think that one degree is how we make the most real long term change.
Jackie: Couldn’t agree more. For me, like in a nutshell, civic engagement to drive democratization and self-government. It’s not just a thing we do for fun when we’re students, this is a caregiving of our communities that is for life.
Angela: Or when we’re going to get really wealthy and we feel like we need to give back.
Jackie: Yeah, we need to be… I mean self-government, what does that mean? We need to do that in our own individual lives, but also for our communities, right?
Angela: Yeah. And I think it’s just thinking about it in, as in like you would your own world and your own life, what is it? Some of us want a huge scope in life, and want to make like a million people impact.
But it’s not probably the most realistic. Most of us can have small impacts, like 50 people, a hundred people. It could be your family, but they get, you either get them educated or on a project around something you really care about. And I think that’s sustainable social impact in action.
Jackie: And create such a ripple, a ripple that we can’t imagine, right? That impact long-term actually over time. A beautiful life is that famous movie that really, it talks about the impact of one individual on so many lives, that we fail to situate how much impact we actually are having. Thank you for that final inspirational message and takeaway for all of us to really, however big or small, just get in there, right?
Get in there and bring your individual gifts and talents as an individual forward into this world, because we all need it. We definitely all need it to take care of each other. That’s a beautiful way for us to have our second series and interview thought partnering out loud. Hopefully, that inspires everyone watching to think through how they can be the change.
And next week we will be shifting into another third interview, which will be in Japanese. It will be featuring the work of a woman who is so inspiring as well. Miyoko Sato, who is a midwife and also the owner and founder of the clinic called Manmaru Mama Iwate and has been doing pre and post maternal care.
To women in Iwate and all throughout the disaster period, despite herself having a baby strapped on her back while she was out doing all of the care, pre and post maternal care to pregnant women in the disaster affected areas across Iwate . So I hope that those who are interested in these topics and in that inspirational story will also join next week.
Just a shout out to the enjoi team. Of course, there are so many different people who come together and support me and others on our team in building out the livestream, and building out different pieces of what enjoi is trying to bring forward in terms of educational workshops on diversity, equity and innovation.
Also online training courses that we will be pursuing and offering in terms of train the trainers for people who wish to become professional leaders and would like to have core foundations training that bring the best of academics, theory, research, practitioner lived realities. We’re going to bring it all forward to make sure people get a really holistic education through enjoi offerings.
So check us out on our website if you’ve got the interest and time. Thank you everyone for listening today. Thank you Angela, for such an inspiring talk.