Japanese NPO for Young Social Entrepreneurs Sending More Talented Leaders to Earthquake-damaged Tohoku Region

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ETIC., a Japanese non-profit organization (NPO) focused on supporting young social entrepreneurs, has been running a Fellowship Program to help with recovery efforts in the disaster-hit areas of the country's Tohoku region since right after the March 2011 earthquake. Under the program, ETIC selects and dispatches young, talented professionals to play leading roles in supporting local entrepreneurs and project leaders to address various regional challenges in areas such as industrial recovery, community revitalization, health care, welfare, and education. Since May 2011, the program has sent more than 160 of these youth leaders to the area, and plans to dispatch another 200 by the end of March 2014.

Established in 1993 with the mission of contributing to social innovation through the fostering of entrepreneurial leaders, ETIC has been carrying out its Disaster Recovery Leadership Development Project since 2011, making full use of its experience in providing support to entrepreneurs and arranging entrepreneur internships for university students, with the Fellowship Program as one its primary activities.

The individuals selected to be "fellows" are in their twenties to thirties and are willing to make a full-time commitment of three months to one year. Advertisements for recruitment are placed whenever necessary on ETIC's website "Michinoku Shigoto."

The projects carefully selected for the fellows to work on are meant to achieve maximum impact for recovery, and ETIC tries to carefully match local needs with their abilities. A monthly stipend of 100,000 to 150,000 yen (about US$1,020 to $1,530) is provided to each one during the program from the Disaster Recovery Leadership Development Fund.