Hasta La Gadget!

In the months since the disasters hit up in the North of Japan a number of innovative movements have sprung up to try and offer assistance and relief to the hardest hit areas. We came across one such project this weekend, the “Ehon Project” (Picture Book Project), a mobile kids picture book library that is bringing smiles and relief to children who lost everything.

The project started in the few weeks after the tsunami hit on 3.11 by Chieko Suemori, an editor of children books, founder of Suemori Books. Originally it was set up to collect picture books from around Japan to be sent up to the evacuation shelters to be distributed to the many children who had lost their parents or family. As the movement grew and it received support from various Japanese companies, the decision was taken to build small mobile libraries which could be loaded up with books and tour the areas so kids instead of receiving the books as charity had chance to pick out the books they want as if in the library.

I chatted with the very cheerful and energetic Halhiko Suemori (pictured below), a coordinator of the project who told us how “many young children have been donating their old picture books and writing letters of support to the children who will receive the books in Iwate, “it is touching how much comfort it gives them, children are helping other children who lost everything.” The project has already collected over 50,000 books from all over Japan and is now raising funds for the Ehon Cars.

So far the organisation has managed to raise enough funds to buy and customize one of six mobile libraries it will send to the area. “Our idea is to custom-furnish lightweight vans as mini bookmobiles we will call “Ehon Cars” that can be driven by our volunteer staff and will be relatively inexpensive to maintain and fuel”. The cars and the volunteers aprons are also emblazoned with the Ehon Project logo which is a fantastically simplistic eye-catching design from Sotocoto, a popular Japanese web magazine focused on the environment.

The aim is to then donate the Ehon Cars to local communities in the area once the project is over,”when the vehicles are handed over, they will of course be packed full of picture books!”. For those wishing to donate you can visit the project website here with full instructions in English.

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