Zeroing in on Left-Behind Children: Sharing 20 Years of Learning with the World

We are endorsing April Dream, an initiative to make April 1st a day for sharing dreams. This press release is PLAS's dream.

Our dream is to create a society where all children, no matter where they are born in the world, can live positively.

Until now, we have continued our activities supporting children and youth in difficult situations, and their families, in Uganda and Kenya, Africa.

Through 20 years of field experience, we have accumulated counseling and training manuals to help children believe in their own abilities and draw their own futures even in difficult circumstances.

In one program, the percentage of children who answered, 'I believe I can always solve difficult problems if I try my best,' increased from 14% at the start of the program to 65.1% at its conclusion.

These changes were born from the knowledge and experience accumulated in the field in Africa.

However, efforts to support children are not confined to specific regions. There are people all over the world facing children.

We will publicly release the counseling and training manuals cultivated through our field work online, making them accessible to everyone.

We aim for our past experiences to serve as hints and clues for families struggling with child-rearing and for educational settings. We also hope that by being utilized by organizations in other regions and local NGOs, and by those who strive to support children, our efforts to support children will further expand.

Knowledge and experience will be opened up and utilized in various places. Through the accumulation of these efforts, the power to support children will spread throughout society.

Furthermore, while expanding the support methods cultivated in Uganda and Kenya to other regions of Africa, we will continue to learn through field activities and develop them into forms that reach more children.

Our April Dream is to realize a society where there are no longer any left-behind children in the world, and all children have hope and can carve out their own lives with their own strength.