I think what gets passed on and spreads is 'education'.

The day before yesterday, I received news of the sudden passing of a civic center director who had been very kind to me.
He was still in his prime and quite young, yet his life has come to an end.
Overcome with grief, I attended the wake yesterday, even though I heard it was a family funeral.

He had been assigned to a new civic center starting this fiscal year, but I had been working with him almost every year in the region where he was before that.
I will refer to him here as Director T.

While tracing my memories of Director T, I found myself reflecting on his character and what he left behind.

There are over 130 civic centers, and each one has its own unique color, face, atmosphere, and scent.
This is largely due to the local residents, of course, but also to the presence of the civic center directors and staff.

I am grateful for the opportunities to work with civic centers in various locations through different workshops.
The planning content, structure, target audience, and the way they interact with instructors vary greatly.
They are truly diverse.

I also conducted children's workshops every year at the request of Director T.
In a sense, it felt unique, and it has left a lasting impression on me.

What made it unique, you ask?
I recall that Director T held 'education' in very high regard.

In ordinary workshops, the instructor is left to handle everything from start to finish, and the instructor leads both the beginning and the end. Well, for me, that makes it easier to proceed.

In Director T's workshops, he would firmly add a 'purpose' and a 'confirmation of growth' for the children at the beginning and the end.

Rather than leaving it to the instructor,
I felt this was an expression of his responsibility and initiative to ensure this precious opportunity served as a place for nurturing the children.

What was particularly impressive was that,
at the end of the workshop, each child would write down what they felt that day in a free-form questionnaire.
If a child wrote something brief in just one or two lines, he would point it out and encourage them to add more.
He would check the sheets submitted by each child and tell them they had passed.

Even school teachers find it difficult to go this far.
That's right, it felt as if he were facing the growth of each individual child, much like a tutor at a private cram school.

I believe this was Director T's policy.
He also valued the children's 'experiential learning'.

From the planning stage, he valued encouraging the children's free ideas and ensuring that each child had their own experience, even if it took time.

There were times when it would have been faster for us on the supporting or leading side—like the civic center or our NPO—to just do it ourselves, but
he would go out of his way to have the children move and actually handle things themselves.
He wanted them to witness the changes during the process.
He cherished those moments.

I heard about his passing from someone involved in local activities, but
many of the children I met back then are likely living their lives without knowing this fact.
However, I am sure that the experiential activities and the things he nurtured are engraved in the hearts of each of those children.

I was reflecting on such things.

Things with form will eventually break.

More than leaving behind wealth or a name, there is value in leaving behind people.

When I think about it that way, I believe the 'education' that Director T cherished is, even if only slightly, surely connecting to something in the growth of the children. I think it is one of the values that Director T lived by.

Even while enduring his battle with illness, he dedicated himself to the community and the children until the very end.

While reflecting on what he conveyed and spread during his lifetime, I would like to connect it to our own learning and to the future era.

May he rest in peace. Thank you very much.

Thank you for reading today as well. Thank you for taking your valuable time to read this article.

The photo at the beginning is used with permission from the work of Kimio Matsushima, Representative Director of E-Happiness Co., Ltd. | note Thank you.

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