Turning Schools Worldwide into 'Peace-making Schools': Nakayoshi Gakuen's April Dream

Our company supports April Dream, a project to make April 1st a day to share dreams. This press release is the dream of the NPO Nakayoshi Gakuen Project.

For April Dream, the NPO Nakayoshi Gakuen Project has set its organizational dream as 'Turning schools worldwide into "Peace-making Schools."'

Peace starts from the imagination and action nurtured in the classroom, rather than just learning about events in far-off countries. We believe this firmly.

Nakayoshi Gakuen has a diverse range of members and collaborators connected across Japan and the world. Although dreams from their respective positions in education, food, manufacturing, regional development, and international exchange may look different at first glance, they share a common root. That is: 'We want to increase learning in the world that makes someone happy.'

The dreams of each member lead to schools that create peace

The 'Peace-making School' envisioned by Nakayoshi Gakuen is not just a school to learn about war. It is a school where children can feel that their own learning and actions become someone's hope across borders. In that future, there are the dreams of each individual member.

One member dreams: 'I want to go to Africa in the summer and engage in cultural exchange between Japan and Africa through sewing machines. I want to bring back those results and realize fair trade for Japanese and African products together with high school students.'

This dream has the power to connect people through craftsmanship, respect cultures, and turn learning into economic independence and sustainable exchange. If schools become places to nurture ideas that support someone's life rather than just places to acquire knowledge, that is exactly what a 'peace-making school' looks like.

Another member says: 'I want people all over the world to taste delicious ramen.' A bowl of ramen is more than just a meal. it creates time to laugh together across borders and cultures saying 'it's delicious.' Sharing a table leads to choosing dialogue over conflict. Connecting through food is also an important entry point for nurturing peace.

Furthermore, there is a dream to 'make the world smile with delicious ingredients from Shizuoka.' Pride in local ingredients becomes someone's joy elsewhere in the world. Connecting local charm to the world is regional revitalization and at the same time, international exchange that respects the other's culture and lifestyle. We also dream of a future where hometown love nurtured at school expands into kindness toward the world.

There is also a dream that directly faces education itself: 'I want to increase Nakayoshi PEACE notebooks by having notebooks filled with students' thoughts travel around the world.' A notebook is not just a tool for writing. It is a place where children's feelings, prayers, and traces of learning reside. When notebooks filled with the thoughts of Japanese children travel the world and support someone else's learning, the classroom becomes connected across borders, and peace becomes more familiar.

And there is a dream that values the realization of local children above all: 'I want to create a future where the children of Anpachi-cho can grow up with the feeling that they have made the world peaceful.' This is the very core that Nakayoshi Gakuen has cherished. Peace education is not something that ends with 'knowing.' It becomes a power that moves life only when it turns into the response of 'My action helped someone.' Education where children feel 'I can change the world too' through their inquiry, production, dissemination, and collaboration. That is precisely what we consider a 'peace-making school.'

There is also a dream to expand connections with the world from the home: 'I want my child to know the world more, so as a member of Nakayoshi Gakuen, I want to take children to the world. I want to think together about how we can use what we felt and learned there for the future.' This dream carries the wish to deliver a 'real encounter with the world' that cannot be obtained only in the classroom to the children who will lead the next generation. Touching the reality of the world, meeting different cultures and lives, seeing with your own eyes, and feeling with your heart. That experience grows children's values and way of life beyond knowledge. And what is important is not just going abroad, but thinking together about how to utilize what was seen and learned for their own region, society, and future. Knowing the world leads to one's own way of life and kindness to others. We believe this cycle of learning is also an important aspect of the 'peace-making school' that Nakayoshi Gakuen aims for.

Representative Yuichi Nakamura's Dream: 'I want to create a life where we all win the Nobel Prize and can "share" the medal'

My dream is for everyone involved in Nakayoshi Gakuen to win a Nobel Prize together and 'share' that medal. Of course, if we win, I will really break the medal (laughs). My wish is for each person who walked with Nakayoshi Gakuen to be able to live their life somewhere proud, saying, 'At that time, I was also on the side of creating peace.' As proof of that, I want to create a life where each HERO can walk with a 'piece of the medal.'

Peace is not something created only by a few great people. Children who wrote in notebooks in classrooms, people who delivered ingredients, people who want to spread smiles through ramen, people who dream of cultural exchange with sewing machines, and people who want to work with children in the world are all bearers of peace. If schools all over the world change into 'peace-making schools,' children will not be just existences to be protected, but existences who create the future. I want to realize a society where everyone who met Nakayoshi Gakuen can think, 'My life has the pride of having made the world a little better.' The big dream beyond that is the Nobel Prize taken by everyone. And I believe that honor belongs not to any one special person, but to everyone who was involved.