Featured Programs

The TOMODACHI SoftBank Leadership Initiative (“TOMODACHI”) is the longest running partnership and as such, offers powerful evidence of the world-changing power of Y-PLAN in a global context. Created by the United States Japan Council (“USJC”), and sponsored by the SoftBank Group, this unique program started in 2012, after the deadly Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of 2011 and resulting tsunami which devastated the Tohoku region. Each year since 2012, the program brings 100 Japanese high-school students from the Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures – the communities most devastated by the disaster – to Berkeley, California for a three week immersive program, involving skills-based classroom work, collaborative short-term projects in and with local communities that are experiencing similar challenges, and cultural exchange activities.

In the Y-PLAN leadership studio, students work with local communities in the Bay Area to propose solutions to community development problems, growing their critical thinking skills and their confidence as potential changemakers and leaders. Coupled with immersion experiences in local communities, they apply what they have learned to their Action Plans, a set of steps they prepare in collaboration with other students and staff members, to be put into effect when they return to their home communities. Action Plan topics cover hundreds of different and deeply meaningful projects ranging from a pop-up farm-to-table restaurant to connect locals and support area farms in Fukushima; using a traditional Japanese art of paper play, Kamishibai, to ensure that younger generations will know the stories of those who lived through the 2011 disaster; to a temporary housing beautification project, using magnets, to bring love and light to families in Miyagi, along with many, many more.