Our director, Soka Horii, spoke at Summer Conference 2025, hosted by Junior Chamber International Japan: "What civic education changes about a town and its future — toward a society where young people are heard".
In a panel with Ryosuke Takashima, Mayor of Ashiya, Horii covered:
the structural reasons young people find it hard to care about politics;
what the Mock Ward Mayoral Election and our other work has produced;
a youth council model drawing on the Canadian case.
Leading the discussion, Horii told the audience that what is needed is a framework in which government, schools and the community together give form to the voices raised in outreach classes across the country — and argued hard for methods that genuinely make young people feel politics is theirs.
We take speaking invitations for symposia, seminars and similar, on the basis of our work in civic education and organizational design and our competition record. See the website and get in touch.
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A student organization working on civic education and teenage participation in public life, driven by the gap in who gets opportunities. Our mission: every teenager should get to meet the person they have not yet become. Around forty high school and university students from Tokyo and the three neighbouring prefectures run it. Our programs include the Mock Ward Mayoral Election — held in the ward office and the assembly chamber, taking participants from drafting policy through candidacy to the count — and Osouji-tai, which builds a sense of ownership over shared space through cleaning. More than 1,000 people have now learned how democracy feels from the inside.
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