On Saturday, October 2, Hands On Tokyo organized the fourth annual event called Day Of Service (DOS).
This one-day event featured five large-scale projects which engaged 240 volunteers, and gave us opportunities to interact with over 200 people. All of these projects met needs raised by our partners (such as NPOs, schools, hospitals, etc.) and offered service opportunities for anyone looking to give back to their community in a tangible way.
We want thank those of you who participated in the Day of Service as it was a great way to mobilize a large group of volunteers and raise awareness for volunteerism in Tokyo. We are grateful for our volunteers, our site captains, our NPO partners, and our corporate sponsors for their generous support and for making the Day of Service a success.
Two projects were held at Hakujuso Senior Home located at Airinkai, Social Welfare Service Corporation.
At The T-shirt Designing Project, eight volunteers helped twenty children living in Airinkai design T-shirts using fabric markers and stencils.
We received reports that the children are wearing the T-shirts they designed.
At The International Festival Project, volunteers helped over 100 senior citizens and children living in Airinkai experience a journey-around-the-world. Nine nations were represented, and as each participant visited the country booths, they received a small souvenir and a sticker of the country's national flag to put in their hand-made passport. At the end of the festival, representatives from the Indonesian gave two magnificent dance performances.
The Bowling Competition and Bingo Game Project was held at the Tamachi Port Bowl bowling alley.
About forty volunteers formed teams with almost fifty children from the Japan Deaf School and several children's home in Tokyo and participated in a casual bowling competition. At the end, the top-three bowlers and members of the team with the highest score received a medal.
After bowling, everyone played a Bingo Game as they ate a light meal. Everyone left with a prize, and we have received many positive comments from the children and volunteers.
The English Language Program, held at Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Co., was a good opportunity for the almost fifteen high-school students from several schools for the blind to communicate with twenty English-speaking volunteers.
All the volunteers were divided into four teams, each running a different program. The Vocabulary Team played a word game called shiritori; the Song Team sang simple English songs like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, and ABC while playing the maracas; the Story Team acted out Henny Penny and discussed the play; the Free Conversation Team chatted casually with the students.
The students enjoyed interacting with all four team members, and at the end, students from Tsukuba Blind School sang When September Ends by Green Day.
The 3R Project was held at the gymnasium of The British School in Tokyo.
3R stands for Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Hands On Tokyo receives left-over amenities (shampoo, conditioner, body soap, body lotion) from The Peninsula Tokyo, The Ritz-Carlton and other first-class hotels in Tokyo. On this day, about eighty volunteers emptied the contents into PET bottles, put on a personalized label, and took them home to use.
We recycled about 105 L (about 3000 bottles) of amenities. Two NPOs specializing in environmental issues, Japan Association of Environment and Society for the 21st Century (JAES 21) and Borneo Conservation Trust Japan (BCT Japan), gave a presentation about the environment.
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Following the five DOS programs, volunteers from each program gathered at the conference room at Merrill Lynch Japan Securities Co. to share about their volunteer experiences and make new friends.
We spent some time to recognize the Site Captains for each project, our nineteen corporate sponsors and six in-kind sponsors, and our 240 volunteers who helped to make this event possible.
Thank you very much for giving so much of your time in service to our community.
The planning committee for this event wanted to give Teradata employees an opportunity to learn about various volunteer projects available to them, thus while sipping on our coffee, we listened to a presentation on Hands On Tokyo's ongoing volunteer programs and the annual Day of Service in October employees. 
