RICE Media, an online platform addressing social issues through engaging content, paid a visit to the Asian Rural Institute to explore the impactful work being carried out by our community. During their time here, they interviewed volunteers, staff members, and
Thank you to those who have supported ARI and recognize our social contribution and value.
Those who have newly found ARI and have come to meet us.
Those who always support ARI’s activities.
Thank you very much.
The donation will be used to improve our training environment.
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Thank you for watching over us and joining our crowdfunding journey to the end.
Your passionate support makes us gratefully feel the magnitude of the task we have undertaken.
If you found this crowdfunding campaign, but missed the opportunity this time.
Please join those who have already participated and lend a hand, and connect with ARI’s “Living Together”.
My comment on the nuance of the English version above (H3) is that, it may translate better the following way:
(I don’t accurately know the context or the way you want to use this, but my recommendation is below.
However, the above is also okay, so if you prefer to use the above that’s also okay. )
In response to your support, we will apply your kindness to the needs of grassroots leaders in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific who will change the world starting from rural villages. Truly, we are grateful.
To those who watched over us and joined our crowdfunding journey to the end.
Your passionate support makes us gratefully feel the magnitude of the task we have undertaken.
To those who found this crowdfunding campaign but missed the opportunity this time.
You can join hands with those who participated and continue to support ARI’s mission of “Living Together”
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From where everyone’s stomach is full.
From those who are close to the soil and yet are in a weak position.
ARI works to enhance “peace from the soil,” a vision of world peace.
We will nurture servant leaders who will make it happen.
Please continue to support us.
We will announce information about gifts for donations received, online bring-your-own meals, campus tours, and lectures by January.
This sentence structure or flow is very Japanese… but I can’t currently figure out the English equivalent.
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lease pray for this year’s participants who will graduate in December and return home.
The participants will learn in Osaka and Minamata as part of the Western Japan Study Tour in November, and will complete their 9-month leadership training at ARI with a final oral presentation by early December.
They will graduate on December 9 (Sat) and return home on December 15 (Fri) and 16 (Sat) to face social issues from the field as rural leaders in their own communities in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific.
Osaka and Minamata (Shizuoka, Mie, Hiroshima also…)
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Donors will have the opportunity to participate in the participants’ final oral presentations online.
There will be no Japanese translation. However, this is a great opportunity to hear their vision formed by their own words.
We hope you will listen to their presentations in English, and take in their thoughts on how they are changing the world from the grassroots.
Final oral presentations: Thursday, November 30 – Wednesday, December 6, 13:30-15:30
*Five days, excluding Saturdays and Sundays. Details will be provided separately.
Rural leaders change the world.
Servant Leaders” create self-sustaining communities and seek world peace through the practice of “Peace from the Soil”..
ARI’s network of 1,399 graduates from more than 800 sending bodies and communities in 62 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific, cultivated over 50 years, will change the world from the grassroots.
Join ARI’s circle to eat together, learn together, and rejoice together.
This afternoon, the ARI participants gathered in the kitchen for a meat processing class!
Our guest lecturer, Hideo Koide, works with his sister at the hand-made sausage shop Neu Frank in Nasu. He has been coming to teach this class at ARI for ten years. He began today’s lesson by showing a chart of the different cuts of pork. Then he turned to the cutting board, bringing out and naming each slab of meat as he worked. Everyone was watching closely, eyes trained on Koide-sensei’s hands as he turned and trimmed the meat with the sureness of longtime expertise. He showed how to slice off the fat, and participants jostled for a chance to try, nudging each other forward, cheering after each big slice. “Oohs” and “aahs” formed a common language for the group.
In groups, participants ground pork using hand cranks, diced vegetables, and mixed seasonings. Through it all, Koide-sensei walked calmly, hands clasped behind his back—literally letting the participants be the ones with hands on. Everyone was diligent in cleaning as they went, fluidly trading roles to make for a sustainable learning process.
Each group had the chance to be creative with their blend of spices. One group went heavy on chili powder, tingeing their mixture bright red (chili from the ARI farm has been very popular at mealtimes lately). Mixing by hand, the participants felt and smelled their way through the process.
Others stuck to observing. One participant, Otim, said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to put in the spice mix, as sausage wasn’t so common in his home country Uganda. “Right now I am just taking it all in with my eyes. I want to observe everything. For me I can develop my recipe later, after learning how to do it first.”
When it came time for Koide-sensei to show the final step, all phones came out to film the action, like a concert! The excitement carried on when each group went back to their station to make the sausage into links. Here at ARI, there is space to learn by mistakes—bursting a casing here, overfilling there—and enough raw material available to practice until perfect. By the hour’s end, there were piles of fresh sausage links everywhere!
Over the next few weeks participants will get to make a variety of pork products: bacon, jerky, tea ham, and meat loaf. The printed recipes can be taken home and reused. Who knows where in the world people will be eating ARI-style sausage this time next year?
On a sunny Monday morning, the entire ARI community got their hands dirty to harvest sweet potatoes for the next year. Everyone enjoyed the treasure hunt of digging into the soil to find sweet potatoes of many shapes and sizes.
Our sweet potato harvest this year totaled a record-breaking amount of 1.73 tons! We thank God for the plentiful harvest that our hands could collect, and we remember the efforts of each of us in planting and growing the sweet potatoes.
Can’t wait to enjoy the delicious sweet potatoes in the next few months!
We spoke with supporter Shinobu Namae to coincide with our autumn crowdfunding campaigns. Mr. Namae is the chef of Michelin 3-star restaurant L’Effervescence and supervises the bakery Bricolage.
Please check the ARI crowdfunding project: https://readyfor.jp/projects/ari
I didn’t know about the July campaign until I saw the Instagram of my friend Shina Tsuyuki, an environmental activist whom I respect and admire very much. I am deeply supportive and hopeful of her activities and have been influenced by her.
Her sincere message resonated with me, so I decided to support ARI crowdfunding.
My relationship with ARI originated with my connection to the Nasu area, because of the many producers from whom I purchase ingredients for our restaurants.
We purchase vegetables from Narusawa Vegetable Garden and Kaneko Farm. We get strawberries from the nearby Ezure Farm. We get dairy from Shirin no Bokujo Farm and Ima Farm (Mr. Takahashi). The miso I use at home is prepared every year at Hinoya Miso shop.
Also, I am a personal fan of Rakuda bakery, which is also associated with ARI, and I collaborated with them at a festival hosted by Shozo. Rakuda baked bread for us when I opened our own stall then.
We had two dinner events at Chus about 5~6 years ago. On those occasions, we were able to purchase pork from ARI.
L’Effervescence is a restaurant. The word “restaurant” means “recovery” in French. We imagine our restaurant as a “place to recover” or “a place to cheer up”. Our restaurant is a place where our cuisine can revitalize and restore the spirits of our guests.
Food can be divided into two categories. One category has a rich flavor by itself and is tasty when tasted as is. The other is something that can be modified to bring out its potential value. I like delicious food. People want to eat a variety of delicious foods. In a region like Japan, which is long and varied from north to south, there is a wide variety of delicious ingredients.
ARI’s ingredients also have their own cooking methods. I believe that the chef’s skill lies in cooking in a way that suits the ingredients.
I majored in political science in university and was interested mainly in the politics and history of developing countries. I think the root of my interest is the question, “Why is the world so unfair?” Over time, I have developed a certain interpretation – remembering that there are some differences within the social structure of a free society – that the important thing is to respect and help others.
I believe that the ability to respect and help others has contributed to the development of human society on earth. There are many different ways for each person to do this, but as society becomes more individualized and isolated, we need many suggestions on how each person can interact with society and make it better and more sustainable. I believe that many people are at a loss as to what to do.
When we hold charity events at our restaurants, many people agree with us. We would like to continue “fostering a sense of place” in such opportunities.
Thoughts from an interview with Mr. Namae
Speaking with Mr. Namae was like hearing one long tale, about the various connections based on Nasu area food, weaved together with connections to issues with Ms. Tsuyuki and his own considerations of fairness. It made sense that those who support charity at the restaurant would sympathize with him.
Mr. Namae spoke about fostering a sense of place. The French word “Effervescence” means fermentation in addition to vivacity, unbridled excitement, and bubbling. The name of the restaurant, L’Effervescence, reflects this meaning.
Fermentation is also an important concept at ARI.
We make use of fermentation when we use local resources that we receive from neighbors who help us. For example, we nourish our pigs and chickens with fermented feed made from local bean curd from a local tofu maker, and school lunch residues from the local elementary school, as well as from our own school kitchen.
ARI participants learn about integrated farming, including the use of indigenous microorganisms collected from the forest to make bokashi fertilizer. ARI is aided by these local resources and practices as a community for rural leaders to learn from and bring back to their own communities.
ARI’s food self-sufficiency rate is over 90%. We consider food sovereignty on the basis of this practice. ARI’s concept of food sovereignty is the right to choose for ourselves what to grow, what to eat, and how to live.
The process of choosing what we eat for ourselves, looking beyond food sovereignty to energy sovereignty, will become a part of our participants’ lives as they return to their home countries and face the oppressed in the midst of starvation and civil war.
Fermentation occupies a significant place in the cycle of life that supports this process. We could even consider that Mr. Namae, who uses ARI’s ingredients, may have already joined the ARI cycle. Also, all of our supporters who eat and live together with us are part of this cycle.
ARI describes this process as peace from the soil, and we seek world peace by living and eating together with oppressed people and farmers who stand on the soil. ARI seeks to nurture grassroots leaders who will, in turn, foster self-reliant communities in rural areas of the world, confronting social challenges such as hunger, poverty, and conflict. We do this by embodying and systematizing the cycle of food and life into a training program.
Similar to what ARI expresses in its motto as That We May Live Together, Mr. Namae says to respect and help others, and gives form to this expression in L’Effervescence or Bricolage, where we eat together.
Please support ARI’s crowdfunding campaign to enhance the environment for developing leaders to create “peace from the soil” in developing countries.
Shinobu Namae Crowdfunding Message of Support
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Restaurant L’Effervescence is a fervent supporter of ARI’s philosophy of building world peace. We share with ARI a belief in the importance of agriculture and food to realize world peace, and we actively practice methods of regenerating an exhausted nature, society, and culture through our daily restaurant business. We treasure growing together, sharing wisdom and joy, and treating others with kindness. We are ready to continue collaborating to build a brighter future. We hope you will join us in supporting our efforts.
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Biography
Born: February 16,1973 BirthPlace: Yokohama
1996
graduated from university (political science of developing countries) and started working as a chef
2003
joined “Michel BRAS TOYA Japon” （and staging at Laguiole/ France)
2005
became Sous chef of “Michel BRAS TOYA Japon”
2008
joined “The Fat Duck” in Bray, Berkshire, England, as Sous chef / pastry
2009
back to Japon
2010
opened Restaurant “L’Effervescence”
Reference
L’Effervescence +81 (0)3 5766 9500 (leffervescence.jp)
Bricolage bread ＆ co. -ブリコラージュ ブレッド＆カンパニー
narusawa saien – 無農薬野菜 成澤菜園 (jimdofree.com)
ARI has launched two commemorative crowdfunding campaigns.
We are running an international travel support campaign on GlobalGiving https://goto.gg/60943 .
In Japan, we are running a campaign to support training and educational content on ReadyFor https://readyfor.jp/projects/ari !
– Summary from GlobalGiving Project –
Donations to this project are eligible for a 50% match as part of the September 2023 Little by Little campaign! until September 22, 2023, at 23:59:59 EDT
Support Rural Leaders in Training Connections
by American Friends of Asian Rural Institute
Transportation is the most significant barrier to attending the Rural Leaders Training Program. Without funds to support travel to the Asian Rural Institute, rural leaders cannot participate and transformation cannot occur.
Eight out of ten participants return to become rural leaders implementing sustainable agricultural strategies in their community, impacting hundreds. Travel is the first step in building leadership in sustainable agricultural development, the building block of society.
Please use this as one of the means to walk together in the circle of ARI together! We look forward to your participation.
In two newspaper articles published on Monday, September 25, Director, Tomoko Arakawa, spoke about ARI’s goal of peace.
Our unwavering mission is to continue our spirit of sharing – both food and life with all who come to ARI. Peace at ARI is best experienced through this perspective of placing importance in “eating” and “living”. The seeds of ARI’s peace are planted and shared by “servant leaders” (leaders who serve) who practice “equality” and “deep listening” which we hope will take root in rural communities around the world.
Raimei Sho, an editorial in the Shimotsuke Shimbun on September 26 (Tue.), introduced the founder, Toshihiro Takami, as an “indomitable fighter” whose passion has been passed on to the graduates and staff of the institute.
To share about this continued passion to reach out to rural communities, ARI staff, Kai Shinoda will also be interviewed about the 50th anniversary and crowdfunding efforts on the JFN radio program “OH! HAPPY MORNING” on Thursday, September 28 at 9:40 a.m.
https://audee.jp/program/show/27266
Summarized from Interview of Tomoko Arakawa, Shimotsuke Shimbun titled “50th Anniversary of ARI,” and lecture at Takasaki Church of the United Church of Christ Japan (UCCJ) on September 24 (Sunday), covered by Jomo Shimbun.
ARI has launched two commemorative crowdfunding campaigns.
We are running an international travel support campaign on GlobalGiving https://goto.gg/60943.
In Japan, we are running a campaign to support training and educational content on ReadyFor https://readyfor.jp/projects/ari!
– Summary from GlobalGiving Project –
Donations to this project are eligible for a 50% match as part of the September 2023 Little by Little campaign! until September 22, 2023, at 23:59:59 EDT
by American Friends of Asian Rural Institute
Transportation is the most significant barrier to attending the Rural Leaders Training Program. Without funds to support travel to the Asian Rural Institute, rural leaders cannot participate and transformation cannot occur. Eight out of ten participants return to become rural leaders implementing sustainable agricultural strategies in their community, impacting hundreds. Travel is the first step in building leadership in sustainable agricultural development, the building block of society.
Please use this as one of the means to walk together in the circle of ARI together!
We look forward to your participation.
This week, ARI crowdfunding matching campagin will commence. Donations will be matched 50% until September 22!
Since 1973, the Asian Rural Institute has been training leaders from around the world on how to make sustainable impacts in their community. Our graduates build peaceful, resilient societies. They grow local food through organic agriculture, and facilitate community development across diverse cultures.
Our three values of foodlife, servant leadership, and a community of learning are what the world has come to require even more in these times of great uncertainty. This year marks 50 years of triumphs and struggles, and we hope for 50 years of more good work, and another 1,300 graduates of our program. To make this a possibility, your financial support is highly appreciated.
During September 18~22, Global Giving will match 50% of donations to ARI! Each contribution, big or small, that you make this week helps us tremendously! Many thanks to our US partner American Friends of Asian Rural Institute for facilitating this campaign.
Follow this link to our Global Giving page, and please share with your friends!
Watch all our online events again!
Join the ARI life with family and friends!
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Tochigi, Nasushiobara
329-2703 JAPAN
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