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Yamada Akiyoshi (General Manager of AJU Center for Independent Living)
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AJU ("Ai no Jikko Undo": movement to bring love to implementation)
collaborated with us from the beginning to build up a welfare town. The
founder was Fr. Georg Gemeinder, a Divine Word Catholic priest and AJU's
representative at the time was Fr. Kondo Masahiro.
Following Fr. Kondo's advice that if we aimed at a citizen's movement within
the local population, not inside the church, AJU will assist us, the disabled
started activities in Nagoya City. Since that time, we challenged ourselves
with many activities that were considered impossible to achieve by seriously
disabled persons.
The first challenge was to organize a summer camp. In those days it was
very difficult to go out by wheelchair and the idea of a summer camp with
wheel chairs was, at first sight, not advisable. But, when we called upon
other companions that were much discontented inside their homes, many participated
to be able to get out.
We made simple toilets and looked for suitable sites for wheel chairs and
held the first summer camp in great success. We felt confident that we
could go out into town using our wheel chairs. Once a month we gathered
together and went downtown of Nagoya enjoying ourselves. We also held study
sessions. Month after month people participating increased giving testimony
of how much disabled people suffer, lonely, at home and how anxious they
were of getting all kinds of information.
The voice of our companions was seriously considered and many important
activities, like monthly meetings and afternoon walks along the streets
of Nagoya, were constantly held.
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The next step was to travel to other towns. At a time when we hardly could
get out from our homes we could not even dream of making a journey. There
were no elevators at Nagoya's Shinkansen Station and people had to carry
us on their back up to the platform of the train. It was totally impossible
to go to any faraway place. But, no matter the difficulties, 70 of us wheelchair
people made the plan to go to Kyoto by the Shinkansen. Naturally, Nagoya
Station refused to cooperate but we went ahead with the trip and demanded
the set up of elevators at the station. Mass media covered extensively
the event and Nagoya Station finally fixed elevators. In conclusion, the
movement to build up a welfare town became a great success.
We continued the public appeals for improving welfare services by a variety
of events, like participation in bon-odori and ordinary dances, chair ski,
yacht riding, welfare films festivals, welfare educational exposures (visiting
educational institutions and letting the students to use wheel chairs),
Nagoya city marathon for the disabled, guidebooks for wheel chair people,
etc.
In 1981, with the occasion of John Paul II's visit to Japan, I participated
in the event to establish a national liaison commission of catholic disabled
people and, as its chairman for 18 years I aimed at a full participation
in mass, demanding a barrier free system in church and a full recognition
of the disabled, as Christians, so that they can fulfill their Christian
tasks and that their voices could also be heard by the Church.
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The disable, getting actively involved and exposing publicly actual social
contradictions, no matter how heavy are their disabilities, are able to
say "it was good for me to be born. It is wonderful to be alive."
But to perceive life that way, they must aim at a society where one is
able to live responsibly. We finally established a Welfare Juridical Person
with several institutions. The central one is the Welfare Home (Residence
for the disabled) where people receive training on social independence.
The other 2 centers built in 1990 are the Day Center and a work place called
Wadachi Computer House. No matter how strongly people want to become independent
in life they must understand how much care they need, how to establish
human relationships and how to manage their finances. AJU's Independent
House has opened a second institution to provide 4-year training courses
for those companions who don't know what to do and trains them gradually,
so that through failures they can understand themselves better to adapt
to social conditions and become independent.
The House was built under the sponsorship of Prince Hirohito and the efforts
of deceased Bishop Soma Nobuo and of many others that have helped with
its running.
During the 15 years of the Residence for disabled people about 70 seriously
disable graduated and returned back to their homes. They are companions
who suffering from paralysis of legs and hands have spent their lives under
the care of their families or totally isolated in dormitories of institutions,
without opportunities of getting out. People thought that they only could
live inside the institutions, but with the help of volunteers they were
able to live socially independent.
The Wadachi Computer House provides jobs to the seriously disable, especially
to those with paralysis of legs and hands and to those with impediments
in speech who cannot usually hold ordinary jobs. And even if they work
in industrial home institutions they cannot get more than 10-20 thousand
yen a month. Facing such an abnormal situation of low salaries, the Computer
House has reached a level of providing yearly salaries of more than 1,300,000
yen, thus it has made significant inroads into the world of the working
disable.
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Seriously disabled people desire, from the bottom of their hearts, that
policies based on the respect for human rights are also recognized in the
socio-welfare world and that they are able to live independently as other
citizens do. AJU started to make an important contribution.
On top of that and based on past achievements, a new industrial center
to provide work for people with mental disabilities was established. In
our country these persons, no matter how hard they work, will only get
a few thousand yen a month. Faced with the abnormal situation that experts
consider this a strange reality, AJU has challenged the issue of jobs for
people with mental disabilities and participated in its solution.
Luckily, the Divine Word congregation sympathized with the ideals of AJU
and put at our disposal, free of charge, the vineyard of their Tajimi monastery
and the nearby winery facilities under the Church at Tajimi City (Gifu
prefecture). We, then, started an industrial center for wine production
and selling, employing persons with mental disabilities.
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Mentally disabled people work during the year in the vineyard and the recollection
of grapes, helping at the same time during September at collection time
for the production of wine and our aim is to provide one million yen yearly
salaries for them. Since last year we employed an expert in wine production
and this year, for the first time, we had a full-scale harvest -5 times
the one of last year- advancing steadily ahead.
The vineyard is just 1.2 ha, quite small for a national standard of a winery,
but we are studying how to produce wine from now on. Our goal is to reach
a selling capacity of 100,000 bottles of wine a year and in order to be
able to pay yearly salaries of 1 million yen we aim at producing good quality
wine. We employed an expert in wine production expecting that after 5 years
we could get the expertise needed to present our wines in public exhibitions,
together with other brands. This is much needed and it is an advisable
way to proceed.
Besides that, in order to produce good wine we made plans to get an expert
in wine production from famous wine-producing countries, like Spain, Italy
or France and approached among others Father Ando of the Jesuit social
center. He happily promised to cooperate with us and introduced us his
younger brother living in Salamanca (Spain) who made appeals to the local
media and radio stations to look for an expert to come to Japan and work
together at our AJU's winery, with people of mental disabilities.
Unluckily, there were no applications and then we decided to pay a short
visit to Salamanca, together with Fr. Ando, to visit wineries there and
to approach directly experts working in them. In spite of a very hard schedule
of only 6 days, we made a study tour of Spanish wineries.
Although we could not yet call on a Spanish zymologist, we visited 4 big
wineries, some already active since 400 years ago nothing to compare with
our small AJU winery- and the whole visit was very profitable. The president
of our support group, Mr. Ono, accompanied also us and provided us with
many valuable hints from his position as a businessman.
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At AJU people with mental disabilities participate in the production of
wine, starting from the work at the vineyards, and our desire is to continue
making efforts to produce a delicious wine second to none, so that all
disable get full respect as ordinary citizens. We strongly demand a society
where human dignity for all is implemented.
AJU has severely confronted the administration for 12 years so that all
disable with serious disabilities, even those lying in bed, could one by
one live full lives convinced that it is a blessing for them to have been
born and to continue living. The personal care of people with serious disabilities
by sending helpers to them is a reality now, as well as their social rehabilitation,
not by isolating them in institutions, but by assisting them to become
socially independent. There is a danger now to pass new legislation to
change for the worse the present system and our companions are earnestly
fighting and holding demonstrations, handling petitions to the House of
Representatives, so that the voices of the weak sectors of society can
reach the decision makers.
We have received all these important instructions from deceased Bishop
Soma, who was the first President of AJU's independent House. Our deepest
desire is to continue acting according to his guidance.
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