More restaurants in Okinawa join program offering free meals for children

An increasing number of restaurants and stores in Okinawa Prefecture are introducing Mirai Tickets, a program through which customers buy free meal tickets priced at around ¥300 each and donate them so children of elementary school age or below can eat for free.

The program was started three years ago by Taco Rice Lovers, a group of volunteers headed by Munenori Yamagawa, a native of Kin, Okinawa Prefecture, using The Okinawa Times’ crowdfunding system.

As of the end of April, a total of 161 stores, including restaurants and major local supermarket chain Town Plaza Kanehide, were taking part in the program. It is currently offered in 92 elementary school districts and the group plans to make it available in all of some 250 elementary school districts in the prefecture by the end of the year.

There are still some areas not covered by the program, and not enough tickets are available in cities such as Okinawa and Uruma.

“There are differences in demand depending on the areas, and we hope to have many free meal providers in places where children use the tickets frequently,” Yamagawa said. “The effects will be big if the program spreads in the central region (of Okinawa).”

But they are facing various challenges, including finding restaurants and stores willing to participate in the program, making it more widely known among children and parents, and encouraging people to keep on donating.

They hope to work with elementary schools so that the list of participating restaurants and stores can be posted on schools’ bulletin boards, as well as making efforts to attract more participants.

Until three years ago, Yamagawa worked for the prefectural police department. As he communicated with juvenile delinquents, he strongly felt that poverty and hunger were behind delinquency.

He himself also grew up in a family with financial difficulties, and there were times in his younger days when he behaved badly.

“Even when I was like that, adults provided me with meals and watched me with love as I grew up,” Yamagawa said. “I hope the community will support children and that the children will support people in need when they grow up.”

Taco Spoon, a restaurant in Naha, has been participating in the Mirai Tickets project since its launch. Owner Kazuyoshi Igei, 41, decided to join the project benefiting children because he himself had been brought up in a single-parent household.

Around 10 children who attend an elementary school located on the opposite side of the road to the restaurant come to eat there each day.

Companies and store owners in the neighborhood donate rice and snacks, and some people offer to buy the tickets in bulk.

Igei tells the children that they are supported by the people in the community, and the children write messages such as “I will eat delicious taco rice and study hard,” or “I want to eat it up again next time.”

Kanehide Group’s Kanehide Shoji, operator of supermarket chain Town Plaza Kanehide, offers Mirai Tickets at its 59 stores in the prefecture. The supermarket joined the program in November and gives around 1,700 tickets to children each month on average, bought by customers at ¥328 each including tax.

Customers purchase the magnetic tickets at cash registers and attach them to a board at the supermarket. Children then take the tickets and exchange them for taco rice or omelet-with-rice bento boxes at the cash registers.

Haruka Goya, managing director of Kanehide Holdings, said she was moved by the enthusiasm of an acquaintance talking about the tickets.

“Being a mother of two children myself, I have been feeling that children’s poverty is a challenge that needs to be addressed,” Goya said. “I thought we could be of help.”

Before becoming involved with the project, she was worried children might hesitate to use the tickets, but she said she was relieved to see them feeling comfortable getting free meals.

“I’m sure adults are buying the tickets, feeling they can’t leave children hungry,” she said.

Other major companies are also starting to make efforts to broaden adoption of the project.

Aeon Group’s Aeon Ryukyu made the tickets part of its Happy Yellow Receipt Campaign, in which customers are invited to vote for charity organizations they want to support by putting yellow receipts into certain boxes with 1% of the total value of transactions used for votes to be donated to the organizations by Aeon.

And the Bank of Okinawa plans to allow people to make donations via its app Okigin Smart starting later this month.

Mirai Tickets can be purchased at stores and restaurants participating in the program, as well as from the Town Plaza Kanehide website.

This section features topics and issues from Okinawa covered by The Okinawa Times, a major newspaper in the prefecture. The original articles were published May 2.