Nishiawakura's Initiative for Self-Dependence Attracting Motivated Young People to Migrate to the Village and Start Businesses (Part 1)

JFS Newsletter No.186 (February 2018)

Copyright 2018 Nishiawakura Village All Rights Reserved.

Nishiawakura is a "village" ("mura," Japanese rural district) with a population of 1,480 people as of January 2018. It is located at the northeastern end of Okayama Prefecture where it borders Hyogo and Tottori prefectures. The village is among mountains about a two-hour drive from Okayama City, the capital of Okayama Prefecture. The village covers 57.97 square kilometers, of which about 95 percent is mountainous forests. In turn, 84 percent of those are artificial forests dominated by Japanese cedar and cypress.

In Japan, a large-scale trend occurred from 1999 through 2010 of neighboring municipalities merging with each other. Even under less than flourishing circumstances, about 60 percent of Nishiawakura's residents opposed merging, and the village decided to remain autonomous. The village's financial constitution, however, was the weakest in the prefecture, and a national census showed its population to have decreased by about 10 percent between 2008 and 2013. It was thus thought that the population would continue to decrease if nothing was done. In this disadvantageous situation, Nishiawakura has continued making efforts to develop the village on its own, and has thereby become a model for the success of regional revitalization on the basis of forestry. In this issue, we introduce initiatives of Nishiawakura -- which has attracted attention from all over Japan -- in the past and present, as well as its prospects for the future.

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Community Nurse Project to Elevate Community Health Across Japan

Community Nurse Project website

Bono Inc., a Japanese startup, launched a community nurse project as a new business segment in May 2016. The project's mission is to train nurses who will support the development of healthy communities. By creating value needed for the development of new community spaces, the project will explore new systems and designs that will help people connect in ways that are adaptive to societal change.

A community nurse is a professional medical practitioner who brings expertise and knowledge to the building of partnerships with people living in a community. Through close contact and deepening relationships with residents over the middle to long term, they strive to elevate the overall health of their community. Characteristic differences between community nurses and nurses who work at hospitals, welfare facilities, or in the home lie in the content and scope of their services.

We could say that nurses who work at hospitals specialize in supporting people with health issues, while community nurses specialize in providing the tools and opportunities for community residents to enjoy their daily lives. The core job of community nurses is to plan programs and activities designed to stimulate and revitalize the community. They try to create opportunities and environments where people can gather and where they themselves can have regular contact with residents. Within these relationships, they strive to raise health awareness, detect illness early on, and facilitate access to medical, welfare, and public facilities.

Their work location is neither a hospital nor a home-visiting nurse station but a community. Their target clients are local residents, sick and healthy alike. As they always are among and close to local people, they can cover aspects of healthcare hospitals cannot cover, and when needed, they help residents to access appropriate experts.

There are three reasons why community nurses are needed in Japanese society today.

1) Limits of local medical and nursing care due to a shrinking and aging population
Community nurses' operate in an area one stage prior to that targeted by local medical and healthcare services. They aim to raise the health level of the entire region and create closer relations and networks among the people living there. Their cooperation with specialized institutions helps lower the burden on local medical and healthcare services.

2) Limits of local community power
The traditional lifestyle of Japanese families and communities in which people support each other has virtually disappeared. Communities across Japan are seeing a disappearance of long-lived traditions and an increasing number of "old couple" households, in which a senior cares for a senior. Community nurses insert themselves between members of the community to rebuild ties and restore the mutual-support functions of the community.

3) New work culture that allows nurses to work out of hospitals
Alongside the shortage of hospital nurses, another issue is the difficulty many hospital nurses face in finding ways to continue working while taking care of their children. The community nurse can be a new career choice for such nurses, as it allows them to utilize their expertise outside the hospitals.

Bono's community nurse project is currently providing the following support services for community nurses so they can more effectively build healthy communities:

• Operating educational and training programs for acquiring necessary skills
• Creating spaces across Japan where community nurses can work and connect local governments with residents
• Working with local businesses to create jobs and launch ventures so community nurses can work on a continued basis

Bono expects to grow the community nurse project further since it meets the needs of both local communities and nurses. It is hoped that, by being a bridge for building partnerships with residents, community nurses will serve an important role in elevating the overall health of their communities.