Vol.1
Maeda Masaya
Chairman, KOCHI IYEO

◆Profile

After serving as Chairperson of the Executive Committee for the "30th National Convention (Kochi)", he has been President of KOCHI IYEO since April 2016. He has introduced the "Youth First Method" as organizational management for youth development organizations, and has planned and implemented leadership development training programs for youth, including hosting of the Cabinet Office International Youth Exchange Program (regional programs) and holding the YOUTH FORUM for youth leadership development.

◆No one knows what life will be like

Anyone who has worked in education should be sensitive to the term "career path". This is because the ultimate response of both principals and teachers to parents is to guarantee "career paths. However, people will someday begin to walk down a different path than the one they have envisioned. Encounters, partings, and realities.

The reason for this is that the gap between the dream and the family (family and academic constraints), and the accident of "no way" will become a "wall" that will stand in the way of your life.

In the face of such "barriers in life," people try to give up, try, struggle, and overcome. And they learn through small experiences that all of these things enrich their lives. No one knows what life will be like.

The question is not so much the fact, but whether we can accept the other reality that "Wonderful life will be created by that fact, and whether we can discover and continue to live the life."

◆Become someone's mentor

Youth are impressionable and transitional, conscious of costumers and tycoons, and unreservedly give severe evaluations to adults. The same is true for YOUTH FORUM.

Youth intuitively evaluate the adults in front of them. The adult in front of them is either a good adult or not a good adult for them, a simple criteria. Education, position, income and background are irrelevant. Therein lies the severity and splendor of youth development activities.

In KOCHI IYEO, we do not take surveys at social events including YOUTH FORUM. It's partly because the voices that need to be heard will always come up through our staff, but mostly because our results do not fit into the evaluation process.

"Become someone's mentor." This is the outcome I am looking for.

College students are the high school students' and adults are the slightly older brothers and sisters of college and high school students. The ultimate goal and achievement is to become an adult who is admired and respected by younger students who say, "I want to be an older brother or sister like this.

◆YOUTH FORUM 100 and 30

Generally, it is said that the training effectiveness of an exchange event decreases when the number of participants exceeds 100. In fact, YOUTH FORUM was also an international exchange event with over 220 participants until 2019. The reason is that YOUTH FORUM was arranged based on the IYEO National Convention in Kochi with 430 participants.

The storm of change began to blow in 2020. Online tools and DX began to spread, and by 2022, "online x face-to-face" interactions will emerge, "creating a space for interaction that is unique to the here and now."

KOCHI IYEO will be established by the year 2025 as the "New KOCHI IYEO". We will launch a new FORUM "YOUTH FORUM 100 and 30" as the "Year of IYEO Creation". The maximum number of students will be 100 and 30 with high training efficiency.

If the student wishes, he or she can be selected from junior high school students based on his or her enthusiasm and ability. Staff positions will be given accordingly. University students and working staff and "only here and now.

Let's co-create "the creation of a space for exchange that does not exist.

◆What I think every day now

I was born in Mirabu, Kami City. My parents' house was a bun shop in the middle of the old shopping street, surrounded by a bank, a commercial and industrial center, a town hall, and an agricultural cooperative. In those days (the 1930s), there were many people, kimono shops and pachinko parlors.

There were two restaurants and even a movie theater. The autumn festival was a grand affair with the "Onabare" (procession of the gods) that went back and forth between the Shinmei-gu Shrine in Otabisho and the Okawakami-Mirabu Shrine.

The shopping streets were filled with spectators as men and women, young and old, called "Hagumauma," "Nerikomi," "Urayasu no Maihime," "Michikiri," "Bo-Uchi," and "Goban Furisode" paraded through the town. I love the streets and surrounding landscape of Mirabu, where such memories dwell, and when I have time, I visit the Monobe River basin and take a walk through "time.

There is no limit to what we need to do on a daily basis. I also look through national newspapers, watches recorded international news and current affairs discussion programs at double speed, and gets into morning dramas and trendy TV dramas.

Time for reading and reflecting on general education books is what is important. And of course, KOCHI IYEO activities and a little work.

But somehow there is nothing beyond that. People are, wonderfully, like that. Huh? I see......