On September 14 (Saturday), the primary contest (students’ category) of the Yunus & Youth Social Business Design Contest 2019, sponsored by Kyushu University Yunus & Shiiki Social Business Research Center, took place at the Kyushu University Nihonbashi Satellite. In this contest, a total of five teams from Soka University, including the two teams Amor and OMNIBUS of Yoshinori Yasuda’s Seminar in the Faculty of Business Administration, two teams San and PLASS of Akio Nishiura’s Seminar in the Faculty of Economics, and team SSKK of Junichi Kanzaka Seminar in the Faculty of Economics, participated. Yasuda Seminar’s OMNIBUS won the contest. In addition, the two teams OMNIBUS and San will be proceeding to the final contest to be held on October 6 (Sunday).

This contest provides an opportunity for youth, who are interested in solving social issues, to learn about the values of Yunus Social Business. From the planning stage, members of society (leaders of business corporations, consultants, and entrepreneurs) support each team as mentors, and they work approximately two months towards the final contest to build an executable plan. This contest was the 8th of its kind. Eighteen teams entered the students’ category while 10 teams challenged in the students’ final contest.

OMNIBUS took up the issue that the level of technical learning by foreign laborers, who come to Japan as technical interns, are not necessarily high and conducted a survey. The teams focused on the high co-relationship between the levels of technical learning and Japanese language ability and came up with services that support their improvement. They presented a business model proposal to commercialize this concept.

Ms. Yuka Takayama who served as the team leader (junior, Faculty of Business Administration) shared, “We faced various obstacles before the competition, including differences in opinions among our members, but I feel that we were able to overcome these differences by each member carrying out this project, remembering ‘the purpose of the project’ and the determination to ‘definitely support the technical interns.’ It was all thanks to the team members who fought together, to Professor Yasuda and the seniors in the Yasuda Seminar as well as to our families who always supported us that we were able to show this result as winners. We want to continue doing our best at the October 6 final contest and improve our business models. OMNIBUS will continue to support the technical issues that many technical interns face.”