Coffee transcends borders and connects people and society. I want to create a couple between a Myanmar farmer girl and a Japanese high school student.
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Press release: April 1, 2024
April Dream Project
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Coffee transcends borders and connects people and society. I want to create a couple between a Myanmar farmer girl and a Japanese high school student.
*Nurture friendships and deepen learning through online exchanges between people of the same generation in Myanmar and Japan. And the movie “Your Name.” I wish we could have a wonderful couple like Mitsuha and Taki from “! *
This press release is a dream sent out by a business operator who sympathizes with the April Dream project and wants to make April 1st a day full of dreams, hoping to make them come true soon.
March 17, 2024. Volunteers from first-year regular students at Meisei High School (Fuchu City, Tokyo), who have been working on the theme of “Fair Trade and Local Production for Local Consumption” in their “Inquiry” class for a year, planned and held the “Fair Trade Festival.” did. Our company supported the production of Myanmar coffee drip bags that they will sell at this event. Taking this as an opportunity, we decided to start an online program for these students, who will be starting their second year in April, to interact with people from a group of producers in Yuwangan, a coffee-producing region in Myanmar.
Many girls of the same generation, aged 16 to 18, work in Myanmar’s production areas. They cross borders and have completely different languages, cultures, customs, economic environments, and political environments, but they are Generation Z. I believe that by making full use of your smartphone, you will be able to open up quickly. The 61-year-old man (our company’s representative, Hidetoshi Miyazaki) decided that if he had the chance, he would like to make it his goal (a personal secret theme) to create couples across borders. Of course, I don’t tell them. Our company aims to make April 1st “the day to send out dreams.”
I agree with Dream. This press release is a dream of Beans Connected Co., Ltd. Dear coffee producer group in Myanmar
* ○Coffee beans connect and create new communication and relationships*
First of all, why did our company set up the dream of “creating couples of the same generation across borders”? I would like to explain the background. Our company was founded in June 2021. This company develops a small automatic roasting machine that allows anyone to roast coffee beans easily and without mistakes, just like cooking rice in a rice cooker, and operates the coffee roasting business platform “RoCoBeL” using this machine. Our corporate philosophy is “Connected: new communication and relationships created by connecting coffee beans.”
In other words, although the company is developing small automatic roasting machines for coffee beans, its business field is more downstream. Rather, the focus is on businesses similar to those of advertising companies. The reason for this is that it takes time to mass-produce small automatic roasting machines, but also because our parent company is an advertising company called Next One Co., Ltd.
Now, “creating a same-age couple across borders” means creating a new relationship. So, while this may seem like a far-fetched dream at first glance, it is actually an initiative that is in line with our corporate philosophy. By the way, our company has used coffee to create various new forms of communication and relationships, such as creating interactions between people with disabilities and the local community, and creating a system to support the activities of medical volunteer NGOs.
Our representative, Miyazaki, signed a marriage contract
(registration) with a Myanmar woman on Valentine’s Day this year in the presence of a judge at a court in Yangon.
Also, this is a side note, but April
The reason why I chose this dream as the theme for Dream is that Miyazaki, our representative, just got married to a Myanmar woman in Yangon on Valentine’s Day, February 14th of this year, and recently my thoughts have been in a romantic mode (funny punch). It may also be influenced in no small part by the fact that
People who are serious about fair trade may scold you for calling it an “unscrupulous dream.” Even the high school students involved may dislike it and call it “annoying!” However, this is just the personal goal (secret theme) and fantasy of a 61-year-old newlywed man who will accompany the exchange between Myanmar farm girls and Japanese high school students starting in April. My wish is, “I wish our
interactions would deepen enough to form a couple!” Yes, it’s a dream.
If online interaction deepens, mutual understanding progresses, and the relationship between the two adolescents becomes closer, it would not be surprising if couples naturally form. I just thought that was very nice. Therefore, I would like to ask for your understanding. * ○High school students set the goal of turning Fuchu City into a fair trade town*
A fair trade workshop was held by a student of Professor Satoko Mori’s seminar at Meisei University’s Faculty of Humanities, Department of International Communication.
Now, on a different note, do you know about the subject called “Comprehensive Inquiry Time”?
This is a new compulsory subject in high schools starting in the 2022 academic year with the aim of “developing students’ ability to learn and think on their own.” The aim is for students to independently set their own challenges and present their achievements and research results, without being bound by the framework of a specific subject.
Meisei High School in Fuchu City, Tokyo has declared itself an “SDGs” promotion school from 2022, and has selected “SDGs” as the theme for two periods of comprehensive inquiry every week. In the following fiscal year, 2017, we narrowed down our theme further and selected “Fair Trade and Local Production for Local Consumption,” and conducted research by researching literature and case studies on Fair Trade, and visiting fair trade shops in the city. I’m here. In addition, since Mr. Shinya Fukumoto, who was the principal until March, is from Kumamoto City, which was certified as Japan’s first fair trade town in 2011, Principal Fukumoto announced that “Fuchu City, where the high school is located, is a fair trade town.” With the goal of being certified as a town, we have been working with Fuchu City Hall and Meisei University to sell fair trade products.
Myojo Gakuen 100th Anniversary Connected Coffee Drip Bag
The first point of contact between our company and Meisei High School was the “Fair Trade Café” held by the Mori Seminar of the Department of International Communication, Faculty of Humanities, Meisei University, which was attended by high school volunteers with a strong interest in fair trade. “Myojo Gakuen 100th Anniversary Connected” was sold at the event.
We helped create the drip bag for “Coffee”. Mr. Koji Yawata, a first-year regular teacher at Meisei High School who drank this 100th anniversary coffee, asked me to make coffee drip bags to be sold at the Fair Trade Festival held in March, and the relationship with the school grew. It has started.
* ○Fair trade festival planned and run by high school students* PR flyer for the event created by high school students
In order for Fuchu City to be certified as a Fair Trade Town, it is necessary for the citizens of Fuchu City to widely learn about Fair Trade. To that end, we have planned the Fair Trade Festival as an event where first-year regular students at Meisei High School can purchase fair trade products and learn about fair trade while having fun through games and hands-on programs.
Fuchu City Hall responded to this initiative. Support will include providing the venue and public relations to citizens. Additionally, we created a pamphlet summarizing the purpose of the event and the past year’s activities. I approached fair trade shops and cafes in the city that I had visited during my research time and asked them to set up shop.
Myanmar coffee tasting session & online Myanmar study session At the Myojo High School booth, we will be selling fair trade coffee samples from Myanmar and drip bags, and our company will be helping out. Prior to that, a Myanmar coffee tasting event was held at Myojo High School on February 17, 2014. Experience roasting your own coffee beans using a small automatic roasting machine currently under development. We sampled coffee that we roasted ourselves.
Additionally, our representative Miyazaki participated via Zoom from Yangon (Myanmar’s largest city), where he is on business. I learned about Myanmar and Myanmar coffee.
Original Connected designed by high school students
Coffee drip bag label. Each label has four variations: light roast, medium roast, medium dark roast, and dark roast, and they were sold as a set to compare.
On March 13, 2015, Onda, the first-year regular teacher, received a lecture on roasting coffee beans and making drip bags from Goyoshio Yamamura of Accessible Kita Omiya.
Then, we designed the label for the coffee drip bag ourselves. Five types of labels have been created for the event.
Additionally, four girls representing the students visited Accessible Kita Omiya, a Type B facility that supports employment for people with disabilities, where they roasted coffee and made drip bags. In addition to observing the roasting and production process, we also helped with labeling and making drip bags.
They held up bags of coffee sent from Myanmar, made drip bags, and applied labels.
* ○Received a message of gratitude from coffee producers in Myanmar* Su Su learns about the efforts of first year students at Myojo High School. Mr. Aung sent a message of gratitude and encouragement to the high school students. The message was made into a panel and posted in the classroom.
Su Su, representative of a coffee producer group in Myanmar, describes the efforts of high school students in preparation for the event. When I told Aung, she was so impressed that she sent me the following message: ကြည့်သူ၊ မြင်သူ များအားလုံးကို ကျေနပ်စေချင် တဲ့ စိတ်၊
အဖြူရောင်စေတနာများ နှင့် စဉ်းစားတွ Design
ရေးဆွဲပေးကြတဲ့ကျောင်းသား/သူများ ” နှလုံးသားလှပသော ပန်းကလေ းများ” လို့ ဂုဏ်ပြုချင်ပါတယ်။
* မိမိပတ်ဝန်းကျင်ကို လှပအောင်ဖန်တီးပေးနိုင် တာက စပြီး
ကမ္ဘာကြီးကိုလှပသာယာအောင် ဖန်တီးပေး နိုင်မယ် လို့
ယုံကြည်ကြောင်းပြောပြပေးပါနော
-Japanese translation-
I would like to express my gratitude to all the students who designed the project and label from their pure hearts and the desire to make everyone they know and meet happy. I would like to congratulate you all by comparing them to “little flowers with beautiful hearts.” *I want everyone to believe that by making the environment around them beautiful, they can make the world beautiful and peaceful.
You can also send photos of the event day using Messenger. I was surprised to see a high school student wearing Myanmar’s traditional costume, “Longyi,” selling coffee, and a message saying, “We’re honored that our coffee was helpful. Thank you. And congratulations on the success of the event.” It’s back.
Promoting coffee while wearing Myanmar’s national costume. The person on the far left of the photo on the right is Professor Mori of Meisei University.
There is a game where you grab green coffee beans with chopsticks and compete to see how many you can transfer in 30 seconds (front), and a game where you scoop up exactly 100g of green coffee beans with your tummy and transfer them, similar to the TV drama “VIVANT”. Many people took on the challenge.
High school students also helped with sales at fair trade shops in the city. In order to be certified as a Fair Trade Town, it is necessary to contribute to regional revitalization, including local production for local consumption. We sell fair trade and locally produced products manufactured by Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. On the right is the jute bag lifting experience team.
Fair Trade Festival Executive Committee Chairman Sho Ikeda and Vice Chairman Yurina Takeuchi. “There were more people than expected, which was great. I would like to pass this festival on to the new first-year students.”
* ○I would like to interact with girls who are farmers in Myanmar* Mr. Koji Yawata has been supporting the high school students’ activities, including making adjustments in various areas. In the new school year, I will be appointed as the new second-year class leader.
Now, here’s the main topic. Next year’s Fair Trade Festival will be handed over to the new first-year students, but the second-year students will continue their activities with the goal of having Fuchu City certified as a Fair Trade Town. A fair trade inspection trip is already planned, divided into three groups: America, Cambodia, and Kumamoto. And this time, we will introduce Connected, a fair trade product made in Myanmar.
The students in the team responsible for coffee production and sales expressed their desire to continue interacting with producers in Myanmar.For one year, as a first-year regular course teacher, I have been exploring fair trade. This was given to our company by Mr. Koji Yawata, who has been promoting it.
This story is told by Su Su, representative of the Myanmar producer group “Amayar Women’s Coffee Group” (hereinafter referred to as “Amayar Coffee”).
When I consulted with Mr. Aung, he readily agreed with two replies. We will plan what we will do in detail, but we will connect Yuwangan, a coffee-producing region in Myanmar, with Myojyo High School online. Su
Mr. Aung gave a coffee class, girls of the same generation who work at Amaya Coffee, and students of English summer lessons for boys and girls in Yuwangan, which Amaya Coffee holds for the purpose of contributing to the local community. I would like to plan and realize various things, such as an online exchange meeting with.
Students from the Myanmar Connected Coffee sales team
* ○I want to show Myanmar girls a wide world*
Many local female farmers work at the Amaya Coffee Factory. In particular, “Hand Sorting”, which performs picking work before shipping coffee.
Station”, young female teenagers are the mainstay. Their daily wage is about $2. Although it is less than one-fifth of the amount in Japan, it is a valuable source of cash income for female farmers who do not have jobs that lead to income. There is no high school in Yuwangan, so students who graduate from junior high school and go on to higher education go to high schools in larger cities such as Mandalay, Aung Pan, and Kalaw. But never too many. There are also many women who get married locally and never leave Yuwangan.
Girls working at the Hand-Sorting Station at Amaya Coffee Factory. Picking involves eliminating beans with defects such as small, chipped, or deformed beans. A new girl picks up a small amount slowly, but once she becomes an experienced girl, she picks up a lot of coffee beans at a tremendous speed.
Wanting to change that situation, in 2016, Su Su
Aung founded Amaya Coffee with 50 female local farmers. This story has been previously introduced in press releases, so I will omit it here. -Click here for details↓-
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/searchrlp/company_id/99626
Then, in 2021, a coup d’état by the Myanmar military occurred. Clashes between the national army and ethnic minority armed groups and the pro-democracy PDF (People’s Defense Forces) have broken out in various parts of the country, and Yuwangan is no exception. Most recently, there was a major armed conflict near the town of Yuwangan. There are many checkpoints by the national army and ethnic armed groups on the roads that connect Yuwangan town to other towns, making it difficult to casually go to other towns.
Furthermore, in February of this year, it was suddenly announced that conscription would be implemented, and unmarried women between the ages of 18 and 27 are eligible for conscription. (I announced this, but no one believed it.) In other words, the girls working at Amaya Coffee are caged birds and live in fear that they may be drafted into the military at any time.
That’s why I want them to interact with high school students of the same generation in Japan. We want people to know that the coffee they work on is connected to people from all over the world, including Japan. I want them to experience a world they have never seen before. And although it may be difficult now, I hope you don’t lose hope for the future. I believe that interacting with Japanese high school students will surely give the girls of Yuwangan many new insights and a light of hope for the future. Of course, for Japanese high school students, interacting with the Yuwangan girls will be an opportunity to realize and learn a lot. Above all, I am sure that it will be a very enjoyable interaction for both adolescents.
Maw Maw Lwin, the leader of Hand-Sorting Station, is currently 23 years old. I have been working at Amaya Coffee since I was 16 years old. Su
Su Aung wants to train her to become a coffee producer like him. * ○ Online interaction is full of challenges. But I’m sure it’ll work out*
We will realize exchanges between producers and high school students. However, there are actually various obstacles to its realization. The quickest and easiest way to get to know each other is to have high school students visit the country and interact with them, but as mentioned above, Myanmar is currently in a very dangerous situation, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ overseas safety website states that The entire country is at level 2, with the warning that all non-essential travel should be canceled, and the northern area of Shan State, where Yuwangan is located, and parts of neighboring Kayah State are at level 3, with the recommendation to cancel all travel. In fact, our representative, Miyazaki, tried to visit Yuwangan in February 2012, but although he was able to get to Kalaw on the way, he had to turn back because the area beyond that point was closed to foreigners. My Myanmar wife visited alone).
In that case, we would have to do it online, but the communication environment in Yuwangan is currently in a very bad situation. It’s completely different from always being connected to the internet. Furthermore, in rural areas such as Yuwangan, the penetration rate of smartphones is low, and not everyone has a smartphone as a matter of course, as in urban Yangon. Furthermore, there is currently no electricity in the town. There’s been a power outage all day. So I can’t even charge my smartphone.
However, Amaya Coffee, which does business around the world, has computers and Wi-Fi. We have our own electricity generator, so you can start your computer or charge your smartphone as needed. Therefore, although there are some inconveniences, if you try your best, it is possible to communicate online. I also think that anything that is a little inconvenient can actually make you want to do something about it and make you more excited.
Above all, they are members of Generation Z, so I think they will be able to communicate with us in ways that older people don’t notice. I think. As a result of that interaction, a wonderful couple like Mitsuha and Taki from the movie “Your Name” was born. Myanmar When peace comes, a touching real-life encounter will take place. I’m looking forward to that kind of drama.
“April Dream” is a PR campaign that will be held on April 1st to share the dreams that companies want to achieve in the future.
This is a project by TIMES. We are seriously aiming to make this dream come true.
that’s all
■Inquiries regarding this matter
info@rocobel.com
■Connected Coffee Online Store
https://shop.rocobel.com/
#AprilDream2024
#RoCoBeL
#Myanmarcoffee
#Myojo High School
#Amayarcoffee
#fairtrade
#fairtradefest
*About details about this release*
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000016.000099626.html
*Download press release materials*
https://prtimes.jp/im/action.php?run=html&page=releaseimage&company_id=99626&release_id=16