Story: Ishinomaki Shoshinkai Foundation, Kujira no Shippo Vocational Support Center for the Disabled
Trainee: Ms. Ayako Ogawa (woman/ age 29 at the time/ mental disability)
Manager: Ms. Kayoko Abe
Employee: Mr. Takamasa Tada
Kujira no Shippo Group Home Himawari, Life Support Staff Ms. Yasuko Abe
Thanks to a local information magazine, the group was contacted by a wakame seaweed company that was short on hands.
Kayoko: But you know, what saved us from the lack of work (because of the disaster) was when the company that had hired us to clean their building saw how hard everyone was working, and actually paid more than required.
Around when was this?
Kayoko: This was in 2012, after the disaster.
We also thought we had to do something new to make our living. So I asked the trainees, “What did you guys do when you were younger?”
Then one of them said they used to remove wakame cores. An acquaintance of mine just happened to be volunteering to run a local information magazine, and so I had a little blurb published in an article saying, “Kujira no Shippo can remove wakame cores. Please contact us.”
Tada: So then we were contacted. We were asked if we wanted to try it. So I tried it out first on behalf of the trainees.
Kayoko: The wakame company had been rebuilt, but they didn’t have enough workers. So we just happened to match up with them quite well. But we had one condition, which was that we couldn’t commute to their site. So they brought the wakame all the way here to our workshop. Once we contacted them saying we were finished, they came to pick it up. That was how we started removing wakame cores in our office, and we’re still doing it every year.
Kayoko: This disaster was really hard, but we also gained a lot from it, and it changed our perspective. Lots of people are leaving the Oshika region, so society is aging here. With the wakame thing, it’s like we’ve become a major part of this industry. So we are responsible for doing our part, along with everyone in this community.
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