Honestly, it is not very clear how our donated money is going to be used, or if the donated commodities are going to get to a right place. However, I’m sure that we’re all willing to help. This idea is important, so we should clearly make this happen.

I doubt that if the project becomes too big, things will get unclear, and will be difficult for every one of us to understand what is really going on.
This is the reason why I don’t want this project to be too big.

I have some friends in Tohoku-area.
Fortunately, all of them are safe. However, they have friends who got tremendous damages. This project is to help them; friends’ of friends.

Here is the flow of this project.
We first look for friends who live near the damaged area. We call these people “delivering friends”.
The money collected from the people; “donating friends”, will be sent to “delivering friends” through “collecting friends”- that’s us.
“Delivering friends” take orders from “damaged friends” and make sure that they get what they really need and want. “Delivering friends” will exchange the donated money into commodities that “damaged friends” need, and send to them.

What we will collect to donate here is only money, not commodities.
Commodities have to be bought at stores in Tohoku area to make its economy work. Therefore,we should send money not the commodities.

The flow of money we will collect is going to be posted on homepage.
This is once again, a small project.
I think it is better to have this project to work within a small circle in which we know each other.
It is not to make it bigger, but to increase the number of friends of friends, possibly friends of friends of friends...
Since we don’t make this too big, request of what they really need will reach us all easier and more certainly.
This is important because it becomes clear for people to know the flow of their donated money and how it will actually be used. More importantly, that way, we will know that we helped!
Let’s find our friends who can be “delivering people” in damaged area.
We have to have enough of these people, but they have to be trustworthy.
I would really appreciate if you can join this project.

2011.4.5

Hirotaka Nakagawa