We, Junior Chamber International Odawara is an organization trying to make our community better in the area of Odawara, Hakone, Manazuru, and Yugawara.
Each of the members of JC is an independent professional and work for JC activities as a volunteer.

You might think "JC members are all wealthy and leisured executives".  But the actual members vary in their work and social position, and contribute to JC activities in their own ways.  

Recently, there are a lot of Non-Profit-Organizations(NPO) in Japan.  In fact, JC is "the Pioneer of NPO".  We have been working for 55 years as non-profit, non-commercial organization. 

Our mission is to establish a brighter and more affluent society. It sounds a very big vision.  Yes, our activities include various fields.
JC members commit to various activities such as community development, education, international exchange, economy vitalization, self-improvement training in our local areas. And, the members even have an opportunity to join nationwide activities of "Junior Chamber International Japan" .

The Junior Chambers International Odawara was established in May, 1958 as the 139th Local Organization Member in Japan. Since then, we have conducted various activities on reviving communities, welfare, and education.
Now, more than 100 members are working on activities for a goal "Making the Odawara area to be an international city of tourism and culture".

Odawara is the gate town of Hakone, which is a world- known tourist resort. In 2010, we, JCI Odawara held "National Conference in Hakone" and achieved a great success. The conference recorded about 20,000 participants and is one of the biggest conferences held in local cities.  And, as its commemorative activity, "National Donburi (Rice bowl dishes) Summit" was held and attracted more than 160,000 visitors from nationwide.
This success made us proceed to develop more attractive "Odawara brand of food"  for the future, and started to hold "Odawara Soul Food Festival".

We believe that people living in this area (Odawara, Hakone, Manazuru, and Yugawara) feel their own culture and history through “Odawara Soul Food Festival” and become more proud of their hometown.

In the Meiji era, soon after Japan opening country to the world, there were two books about Japan read by many people all over the world. They were “Bushido” by Inazo Nitobe and “Representative Men of Japan” by Kanzo Uchimura. “Representative Men of Japan” introduced five great men from Japanese history, and one of them was Sontoku Ninomiya, who were born in our hometown Odawara.
 
Sontoku Ninomiya was born in Odawara in the end of the Edo period. He reconstructed finances of Odawara district facing considerable financial difficulty, and also worked for community regeneration of 600 ruined agricultural villages throughout Japan.
 Today, people are forgetting sense of ethics and discipline.  Now, it's the time to learn from Sontoku, who saved our Odawara district almost a hundred years ago, and to convey Houtoku Lessons to the next generation.

JCI Odawara holds "Houtoku Class" for children to learn about Houtoku spirits in fun game.

Our Disaster Prevention Program uses a DIG (Disaster Imagination Game) method.
DIG is a method for disaster drill. Participants use a map on a table, discuss disaster relief activities, and communicate to understand each other and build up face-to-face relationship. It requires only a pencil to participate, so it is easy to start.

Drill
We conduct this drill on the assumption of that a big earthquake occurred in the west part of Kanagawa prefecture.
In the drill, participants do:
Simulation of disaster occurrence: to grasp the affected areas
Safety check : to command aid and rescue one can do by oneself
Simulation of Evacuation :  to judge priorities, to check hazardous area, to prevent secondary disaster.
Finding problems and planning disaster relief activities in advance :  to think about what can be done either by oneself and with the community.

In order to make DIG more effective, DIG meeting should be compact and community-oriented.
We will conduct this Disaster Prevention Program in order to improve one's ability of self-help.We hope that our community members will check the disaster-preparedness of their own, and unite as a community to save their own town, not just expecting public-help.

Many have dissatisfaction in the reality that funds, local support and notability influence politics too much.
We JCI are acting in order to change such situation.  We insist that "Politicians should be elected only by their capability" and hold Open Forums with politicians in many places, taking advantage of the nationwide network of JCI. In our Open Forums, politicians vie in their policy by proposing their "manifesto".  Manifesto should show a concrete numerical target and does not remain in a mere slogan.  We believe that our Forum brings the principle of competition to the political world, and that will improve the quality of politicians and consequently make better society in the future.

JCI holds various lectures as well.

Lecturers invited to Odawara JC to date:
Birei Kin (Critic)
Zomahoun Idossou Rufin (Talent, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Benin)
Yoshiko Sakurai (Journalist)
Yoshiie Kosuke (Councilor)
Soichiro Tahara   (Journalist)
Yohei Kono   (Speaker of the House of Representatives)
Nobuo Ishihara   (former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary)
Teruhisa Kitahara   (TOYS, Inc. CEO)
Kai Atoh  (Actor)

…and many others