Volunteer Activity in Tohoku Part 4

 On the third day of our volunteer activity, while we were waiting for the volunteer center to open, we had a chance to talk with a volunteer staff. We discussed the current issues surrounding volunteer centers. According to his opinion, local volunteer centers and their activities are gradually fading away because sometimes malfunction happened  among residents, local offials, and volunteer centers. 

 Most of the local residents do not know the existance of volunteer center itself . Even though they have already known the center, they are afraid that they would pay hefty bills like scam, so they avoid contacting the volunteer center. Especially elderlies, most of them do not use computers, so it's  hard for them to access to the information about volunteer centers. 

The owners, who requested us to correct the debris of their houses through the volunteer center, did not know volunteer center at first. They have evacuated to Shiogama city and they lived with their relatives just after the tsunami struck. When they came back to their ruined house, they realized that neighboring broken houses have been uncluttered. They saw volunteers gathering debris and cleaning out remnants of the houses at that time. Then, they visited local official to know how they could contact the volunteer center. Finally they were able to submit their request. If the affected people have known the volunteer centers well, they could have had their houses cleaned earlier. I think the information mismatch is very serious in the damaged Tohoku area.

Aside from information gap, the activity that volunteer can do depends on the local officials' openness. If there are influential constructors in the city, the local official tried not to collaborate with volunteer center. If volunteer can repair buildings or bridges, the constructors decrease their profits. So local official prioritize interests of the private sectors. The areas that infamous politician like a dectator  dominates are recovering slower than the cities filled with volunteers.  Local officials and government tend to prioritize them to local elderlies and help  them in expanding thier playing field.