Project Report
| Nov 13, 2025
When is the last time you did something..
When is the last time you did something for the first time?
We realize that teaching the younger generation is the elixir of life when you hear one of the children we support take a career assessment test and yell...."HEY, this says I could be a teacher or HEY, this says I could be a lawyer"
And we try to stay in that space to inspire, mentor and encourage.
At our core, we give Laptops to children in orphanages and we make sure they have one when they leave the home and we replace them when they break if they are in university.
Teaching about 21st job skills for children who will live to the 22nd century. I am not sure what I can teach a child that will live to the 22nd century.
A child born today in Japan will live to be 107 on average.
But what will never change is communication, collaboration and creativity with a focus on the root word of create and being the creator of their own lives.
None of us ask to be born but when we are, we deserve everything life has to offer.
There are 3,000,000 children living under the poverty line in Japan. So, if you think of it as a poverty river coming down from the mountains, we have been able to save 33,000 into institutional care and push 15,000 into foster care.
In a country which has more people over the age of 65 per capita in the world and less under the age of 15 per capita in the world, the population of Japan will half by 2100.
So we do not look at these kids as marginalized but Maximumizable kids,
I always dread when we have to make the Annual Report because immediately I wonder, "Did we do enough?"
But when we start the report, we realize it is not a powerpoint....or a report at all...it is photo album.
And we are further reminded that photo albums are never filled with photos of the challenges in life, they are only filled with the snapshots of happy memories.
But we have to get through those challenges to have more happy times.
The annual report is not a report, it is a time machine....that goes backwards and forwards back to a place where we ache to go again and again..where we have been helping raise children for over 17 years...it is like a merry go round...lets us travel the way a child travels, around and around and back home again...to a place where they know they are loved.
For those of us who have made Japan our home we get nostalgic for where we come from. But maybe the work we do is all about helping walk people home.
YouMeWe is one of the few consistencies the children have in their lives because come rain or shine we show up every week.
The kids hop on this merry go round and then they hop off again.....and the next generation comes into our lives with the grace and generosity to allow us to witness their lives and they leave footsteps on our hearts and we are never ever the same.
Links:
![Share on Twitter]()
![Share on Facebook]()
