On December 14 (Saturday), the “6th Tama Students Competition on Town Planning and Production 2019” (sponsored by Network TAMA) was held at Meisei University at which OMNIBUS of the Yoshinori Yasuda Seminar of the Faculty of Business Administration won the Most Outstanding Award. This was the third straight year for Yoshinori Yasuda Seminar to win this award and the fourth straight annual win by Soka University. Also, Amor of the same seminar and Shoga Girls of Noboru Mizumoto Seminar of Soka Women’s College both won an Outstanding Award (2nd place).

In this competition, students plan and devise ways to revitalize the city based on what they learned through fieldwork held in the Tama area, thereby making a proposal. This year’s event, which marks the sixth of its kind, saw 16 teams from eight universities that were selected via various submitted documents, with all of them giving a presentation under the theme, “A community revitalization project based on student ideas,” along with making proposals using various ideas that reflect the perspectives and sensibilities unique to the students.

OMNIBUS gave a presentation based on the theme, “Promoting the improvement of the Japanese language ability of foreign technical interns: A ‘Japanative’ project.” OMNIBUS took up the fact that the labor productivity of foreign technical interns, who are brought into Japan as a measure for mitigating the overall serious lack of workers in the Tama area, was an issue and carried out their own research. OMNIBUS focused on the fact that there is a high correlation between the level of technical learning and the level of Japanese language ability. They came up with ideas for services that support the improvement of Japanese language ability and technical learning from the perspective of revitalizing the community, and they proposed a business model to commercialize this idea.
The judges commented and shared: “As foreign laborers will increase in number in Japan, such engagement is extremely important from the perspective of city planning. The contents were well considered in detail, with a high degree of perfection, and the presentation was wonderful.”

OMNIBUS team leader Ms. Yuka Takayama (Faculty of Business Administration, junior) shared: “There were many times when we wanted to give up due to repeated failures and setbacks, but I am so happy that our efforts bore fruit. I will continue to thoroughly learn and increase my abilities, knowing that striving to achieve our vision for the project will lead to my own growth and my own future.”

In addition to the presentation category at this competition, there was also a popular poster award category also entered by the participants in which Amor of Yasuda Seminar won first place.

Members of the OMNIBUS, from Yasuda Seminar:
Yuka Takayama, Akiho Kiba, Sakura Kobayakawa, Yoshimi Nishiyama, Yoko Hikita, Teppei Matsuda, Ayumi Inoue, and Hideo Furuichi