Introducing you another organisation working tirelessly to ease some of the suffering in NE Japan, Nagoya-info.com looks takes a look at Second Harvest Japan.
Second Harvest Japan was started in 2000 as a joint activity among different soup-kitchens so that all the soup-kitchens could effectively collect food. In 2002, they formed Food Bank Japan (FBJ) and it was soon registered as a nonprofit organization. In 2002, FBJ changed its name to the current name, Second Harvest Japan. Second Harvest means to save the food that was not harvested in the first harvest (commercial market) but still good and safe for human consumptions for its second harvest. 2HJ gives this food that would otherwise go to waste a new life. Since its start-up in 2000, the number of corporations, farmers, individuals that donate food to us increased. At the same time, the number of charitable agencies that use our food resources increased as well. In 2009, 2HJ received food donations from about 500 companies and distributed them to about 500 charitable agencies all over Japan.
foodbank
In Japan, 5 to 9 million tons of safe food are thrown away every year. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of people live below the poverty line in the same country. Foodbanking is an activity to collect the food resources that would otherwise go to waste and redistribute them to those in need.
“Thanks to the support of donors, Second Harvest Japan delivered about 1.3 million servings of food to 200,000 people in need such as children in orphanages and women’s shelters in 2009. But, in Japan, there are still many people in need of our help while a lot of safe and edible food are thrown away for various reasons. We want to deliver more food to those in need. In order to make this happen, we need your help. Thank you very much for your support!”
Tohoku Earthquake March 11th, 2011
Second Harvest Japan are in desperate need of more support for NE and needs your help to distribute supports needed by people in the affected areas.
“This disaster relief will be a long time effort. Please help us provide necessary support to the affected people. Your generous donations will help those people. Thank you very much for your help! Donations for the disaster relief will be used for mostly logistics costs such as truck fuels, highway tolls, maintenance fees, drivers and so on. For every 1,000 yen donated, we deliver 10,000 yen worth of food to the needy.”
Check out Second Harvest Japan’s homepage with all information regarding their operations now, how to contribute and donate. 2HF are also updating a daily blog on their activities which you can follow here.
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