Community Involvement and Development

In fiscal year 2010, we launched communication activities to build mutual trust with local communities. In fiscal year 2011, each production base, led by Local Communication Promotion Commissioners, carried on setting and working toward targets appropriate to their respective communities. Our approach to this initiative is given in the Framework for Promoting Communication with Local Communities (see figure below).
Basic responsibilities consist of the duties the company ought to fulfill as a member of society. This includes reducing environmental impacts that arise from business activities, and raising employees’ awareness of corporate ethics and compliance such as by boosting their morale. Social contribution activities, on the other hand, involve verifying the issues and needs of a given community and making efforts to respond to them. Our goal is to be a constructive company that is needed by society.
Basic responsibilities and social contribution activities are both important; neither alone can achieve Co-Existence with society. Our aim is to keep the two wheels of “responsibilities” and “efforts” in motion, and thereby to be a constructive company that is needed by local communities.

We set forth our approach to social contribution in the Basic Social Contribution Policy. With a focus on four main fields—environmental protection, next generation support, promotion and support of arts and culture, and human support—the policy expresses our desire to use our management resources effectively and contribute to society under the spirit of global citizenship. With this policy as a base, we hope to engage more effectively and more actively in social contribution activities.

We and non-profit organization (NPO) Kids Meet Artists, based in Kyoto City, jointly hold Machikusa Workshops. Children explore the local community for weeds, give them original names, and present their findings to each other. The initiative aims to spark interest in the immediate natural environment, nurture hearts that care for all life, and stir the children’s imagination.
In fiscal year 2011, we held the workshop with third-grade students attending Suzaku dai7 Public elementary school in Kyoto city, located near Nissha Printing Co., Ltd. Headquarters.
On day one, under the direction of artist Shinpei Shigemoto, aka Doctor Machikusa, the children went on a quest for wild plants on their school premises. They photographed the weeds, gave them names of their choice, and then returned to class and made their presentations. “Straight Spine,” “Elephant Nose,” “Palm-of-the-Hand”… The creative names invited both nods of approval and giggles.
On day two, the children divided into groups and arranged the plants they found on the school grounds into maps. They discovered that much vegetation thrived in places they didn’t give a second thought to before.
And on day three, Shigeru Matsutani, director emeritus of the Kyoto Botanical Garden, visited the school and delivered a speech titled “The Wonders of Plants.” He gave a lesson filled with surprises and awe in which the children examined burs, or prickly clinging plants, with a magnifying glass, and experimented with greens in the pea family that were traditionally substituted for soap.
We contributed to the workshop in a way we know best: we made posters and leaflets of the maps the children compiled and gave them to the participants as gifts.

From October to December 2010, we participated with the Sasatani Laboratory at Ritsumeikan University in a Local Community Power Map-making project undertaken by Suzaku dai3 public elementary school in Kyoto city. The elementary school district is rich with history and tradition, with temples linked to the Shinsengumi special police force from Japan’s late shogunate period and Yuzen textile-dyeing studios nearby. The university students helped a group of third graders, who call themselves the “community culture explorers,” to gather material and photograph these sites and compile a map that introduces the local community. We printed the map into a leaflet and gave them to the participants as gifts.
The event was organized to educate the children about their wonderful community and to encourage them to interact with university students as well as local residents and businesses. For us too, it was a good opportunity to strengthen communication with the local community.

In October 2010, group company Nissha (Kunshan) Precision IMD Mold Co., Ltd. conducted publicity to raise awareness about environmental conservation and cleaned up litter at a park in Kunshan City. The activity communicated that our smallest efforts lead to the preservation of the global environment, and was even covered by a local newspaper.