5th Island Meeting Held on Chichijima

The Gulf of Futami in Chichijima serves as the entrance to an alternate world

In the Tokyo Treasure Islands project, residents of the island hold meetings and take initiative to discuss and polish what the island has to offer in an effort to brand the islands. This report covers the fifth Chichijima island meeting held on December 11.

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The fifth island meeting communicated the identity of Chichijima

11 people participated in the fifth island meeting. First, those who participated in the fourth general Tokyo Treasure Islands meeting reported on their presentations.

At that meeting, the participants talked about the historic background of Chichijima citing the presence of Western culture, and emphasized that it is otherworldly, as expressed in its slogan, "An otherworldly island where life shines as it is."

Looking back, they said that they were able to communicate the identity of Chichijima during the presentation of action ideas, including environmental conservation programs and passports (tentative), which are plans to welcome those who wish to be a part of the Ogasawara family, the persona that Chichijima has set.

Presenting on the requirements necessary to realize the action ideas

Next, there were presentations on three-year roadmaps to realize the environmental conservation program (tentative), passport (tentative), birds-eye view as a universal design, and postcard creation using exterminated foreign tree species, which are four action ideas organized in previous island meetings with the aim of creating a sustainable society.

The proposers of the environmental conservation program presented a roadmap that took into account offers from companies and educating staffs on island with the two goals of ultimately conserving Ogasawara's natural environment and restoring the natural environment and allowing people among the participants to communicate it. The proposers of the passport (tentative) talked about cooperating with relevant agencies to create a framework for making opportunities for conversations in the island and promoting usage by improvising through upgrades that come with increased use in order to increase the number of tourists who understand Ogasawara.

The proposers of the birds-eye view as a universal design considered screening places for animations drawn in the seabirds' perspective, creating videos that explain ecological activities in Ogasawara in the second year, and for the third year, a development plan for a smartphone app that allows individuals to drop pins on environmental activities in which they've participated. The last group presenting on postcard creation using exterminated foreign tree species talked about learning the production process at a company that actually produces recycled paper and how they would like to ultimately hand off the know how to organizations that conserve Ogasawara's environment.

A discussion to deepen the four action ideas

After the roadmaps were displayed, the participants were split into four groups by action ideas to conduct a discussion. They then organized the contents of the discussion and went deeper by using a matrix diagram where the vertical axis represents importance and the horizontal axis represents difficulty.

Finally, each of the proposers presented the contents of their discussion. The facilitator pointed out that the name "passport" may be misleading, so it was decided that the name would be reconsidered. He added on by saying, "Ideas such as "Ogasawara Traveller's Note" and "Bonin Dictionary" have been raised. There are other fun ideas that are being proposed, so discussions should be continued."

Participant Homare Nishimoto said, "I feel at ease because each of the participants are acting towards realization. I hope to deepen the contents by incorporating how to make people interested in the island into the action ideas."

This is the last island meeting for the current fiscal year, but discussions will continue ahead of the business matching that will be held in Tokyo on February 18.