On March 19th, 2006 HFHJ set up a booth at the charity concert "YOKOHAMA Love Summit 2006". Gathered Habitat volunteers introduced the organization and its activities, and asked for donations from over 6000 visitors.
An hour before the concert began. The lobby was clouded, yet it was very easy to locate Habitat volunteers by their bright, pink-colored event jackets, and raised voices to solicit donations. It was also because our volunteers' motivation and initiatives that we caught the attention of all that were there.
Almost 50 volunteers gathered, mainly from 3 Campus Chapters in the Kanto area (Aoyama Gakuin Univ., Meiji Gakuin Univ., Kanda Univ. of International Studies). As those students regularly have fundraising activities, they seemed not to hesitate to talk to strangers. Funs of the Korean and Japanese stars are not necessary aware of the global poverty housing issues, but volunteers stepped to them with a smile and friendly explanation of why they build with Habitat. At the ticketing area and even on and around the stage, their vitality worked its magic.
As the concert approached its end, one staff member from the event organizers kept asking me to have him at our final meeting of the day. According to him, Habitat volunteers worked more than what he expected where he usually hires part-time staff for. "It is clear that we could not complete this event with such success without you." He had to tell the volunteers himself.
The reasons for joining the campus chapters for visiting the overseas to build, for working at Habitat, for going to the concert, for singing at the concert, for organizing the event...we all had different reasons to gather there. I report here, that there were effects uncountable by neither the number of visitors nor the donations we received. No matter if the reason was the same or not, we all gathered and learned from one another.
Thank you very much for all the cooperation at the event.
For your information:
　Total amount of donations to HFHJ: 1890684 yen (17149.00USD)
　Total number of visitors: 6000
　Number of Habitat volunteers: 44
　　Aoyama Gakuin Univ. CC; 15 　　Meiji Gakuin Univ. CC; 9
　　Kanda Univ.Int’l.Studies; CC; 11 　　Waseda Univ.; 1
　　Dow Chemicals; 3 Panasonic; 1 HFHJ staff; 4