On July 17, two students paid a courtesy call on Masako Mori (Minister in charge of support for women's empowerment and child-rearing, and Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, Measures for Declining Birthrate, and Gender Equality), who was elected to the House of Councilors from Fukushima Prefecture, on behalf of all the Meiji University students engaged in volunteer activities in the Fukushima town of Shinchi-machi, with which Meiji University has concluded an agreement for provision of support for recovery. The two are Saia Nakazawa (a fourth-year student in the School of Arts and Letters) and Shuhei Urakabe (a third-year student in the School of Information and Communication).
This courtesy call grew out of Minister Mori's appearance as a keynote speaker at a symposium open to the public that was held by the Population Association of Japan (chaired by Dr. Shinji Anzo, Professor of the School of Political Science and Economics) on the Surugadai Campus in June. On that occasion, she also dropped by the 2nd Forum to Prevent the Fading of the Great East Japan Earthquake from Memory (co-hosted with organizations including the Support Center for Earthquake Reconstruction), which was held at a different venue on the same campus. It was then that she learned about the Meiji University activities in Shinchi-machi. The courtesy call was made in response to the wishes she expressed to hear what the students involved in the activities had to say.
