On March 8, 2025, students in the SHIMADA Go seminar in the School of Information and Communication, Meiji University were awarded in the “Fukushima, to the future” Challenge Award 2024 hosted by the Ministry of the Environment, and the award ceremony was held in Futaba Business Incubation and Community Center (Futaba-machi, Futaba-gun, Fukushima).
The winners were MINAMISHIMA Maaya, KOBAYASHI Miho, TATARA Honoka, NYUWA Riri, and FURUTA Kirari, who submitted a presentation piece on the theme of “Learning Journey without Pens: A New Home Found by ‘Me’.”
The group conducted a number of field surveys mainly in Hirono-machi, Fukushima Prefecture, and proposed a regional revitalization initiative based on a new perspective of “learning and tourism.”
In this proposal, they conceived a mechanism to promote long-term relationships with the local community by making use of Hirono’s educational environment and nature and making learning a tourism resource.
Specifically, it plans to run a program in which university students from the metropolitan area and local junior high school students become “buddies” and rediscover the charm of Hirono through actual experiences.
Through this program, the goal is to create a “home for everyone” where people who do not live in the town or who have left the town want to come back there.
After the award ceremony, a bus tour was held for awardees to learn about Fukushima today and visit the interim storage facilities and the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum to deepen their understanding of the current situation of reconstruction.
Through this award and participation in the award ceremony, the five seminar students realized once again the importance of environmental restoration and involvement with the local community in Fukushima, and renewed their enthusiasm for future research and activities.
One of the seminar students who received the award said, “Thank you so much for this prestigious award. We have been working in Hirono for about a year with the support of many people. We are pleased to say that this award was made possible through accumulated trial and error, in which we felt the warmth of the people of Hirono and explored ways to contribute to the town.
We owe this achievement to your cooperation. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. We will do our best in the future, so we would appreciate your continued support.”
Shimada Seminar plans to continue activities to revitalize the environment in Fukushima and deepen ties with local communities, aiming for further development.